Rijen Railway Underpass
By Bacterial self-healing concrete technology developed at Delft University of Technology by Henk Jonkers and Erik Schlangen; constructed by Heijmans Infra; commissioned by ProRail
Photo: Heijmans Infra
- Location
- Rijen, the Netherlands
- Date
- 2024
- Technology
- Self-healing concrete containing bacterial spores and nutrients (approximately six kilograms of spores and nutrients per cubic meter of concrete), originally developed at Delft University of Technology by Henk Jonkers and Erik Schlangen, mixed directly into a 25-meter basement wall. When water and oxygen reach a crack, the bacteria activate and precipitate calcium carbonate, sealing it.
The first Dutch project to combine self-healing concrete with a reduction in horizontal steel reinforcement, testing whether the concrete's self-sealing capacity could substitute for some of the reinforcement conventionally required to control cracking — and the first commercial application of this specific TU Delft-originated bacterial technology at this scale.
Actual PerformanceSteel reinforcement was reduced by approximately 35% compared to a conventional design, since the wall needed only about half the usual horizontal reinforcement steel. The project tested and demonstrated waterproofness of the resulting structure, validating the combined approach (self-healing concrete plus reduced reinforcement) as feasible at real infrastructure scale.
