Mimicrete GCRE - Self Healing in Railway Practice.

There are approximately 1.8Bn train journeys in the UK each year, with millions of people passing through stations on a daily basis \[Network Rail, 2022\]. It is imperative that the UK's railway infrastructure is maintained and updated to ensure safety and performance. Furthermore, innovation is needed to bring rail infrastructure in line with UK net zero carbon ambition.

Concrete is used throughout the UK's rail network for significant structures including railway sleepers, copings and miscellaneous station infrastructure. However, whilst concrete is a robust and suitable material, it's production is responsible for a significant proportion of global carbon emissions and it is prone to cracking/degradation as a result of operational forces and environmental degradation.

For example, network rail requires approximately 800,000 concrete sleepers each year \[RailUK, 2020\] to cover both new infrastructure and replace damaged and end of life blocks.

Mimicrete Ltd have developed a self-healing concrete technology that works to heal cracks as they form mitigating further cracking, subsequent structural issues and the need for repair and early replacement. We will work to assess the feasibility of using our technology in concrete structures within railway infrastructure with a case study on sleepers and copings in the first instance, with a view to deployment in other structures that use pre-fabricated concrete blocks for construction.

We will undertake feasibility to develop designs and specifications for Mimicrete systems that can be demonstrated and tested at the Global Centre of Rail Excellence. In addition to design and planning of the demonstration logistics and testing parameters, we will quantify the benefits Mimicrete systems can have when compared incumbent systems and state-of-the-art competitors including carbon savings, materials efficiencies, cost benefits and safety and resilience improvements.

We will engage with the Global Centre of Rail Excellence team to understand sector drivers and undertake planning for a Phase 2 demonstration project.

Successful completion of the project will allow us to prove our innovation for the rail sector in a way that ensures maximum benefits for end users. We aim to commercialise our systems post project via strong, strategic partnerships.