SHAPE FORMING
SEAL OF APPROVAL
How far are self-healing vehicles from becoming a reality? Ben Smye investigates
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magine a car that would never experience a tyre puncture, a plane that can remain structurally intact over thousands of flights, or
a ship that’s insusceptible to corrosion. These may sound like far-fetched ideas, but that hasn’t stopped materials scientists from developing advanced self-healing materials that could one day achieve this. It’s inevitable that vehicles frequently used as transport will experience scratches, micro-cracks or dents during their lifecycles — whether due to collisions or environmental conditions. For most private car owners, the consequences range from aesthetic imperfections to personal
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expense for repairs. However, the effects of damage can be even more impactful for owners of fleets or airlines, where damage to vehicles can significantly increase operational costs. Even without damage, the cost of
maintaining larger vehicles quickly mounts up. In 2018, the International Air Transport Association carried out its maintenance cost task force survey. The survey found that, in 2017, airlines spent an average of US$828 per flight hour on maintaining narrowbody aircraft and an average of US$1,410 per flight hour for widebody aircraft. The total maintenance cost of vehicles such as aircrafts will
always be relatively high, due to the expense of routine tasks such as cleaning, inspection and component replacement. Furthermore, in most cases, if cracks occur in key components while a vehicle is in operation, it would be difficult – if not impossible – to tend to immediately. However, vehicle design engineers play a crucial role in helping to minimise future costs of maintenance, and it all comes down to material selection.
One class of materials that has held
a lot of promise for design engineers in recent years, especially those in the transport industries, is self-healing materials. As the name suggests, self-
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