Concrete structures crumble within years when submerged thousands of metres underwater, far short of the decades-long service life needed for deep-sea energy infrastructure. The problem is that cement and concrete designed for buildings or bridges cannot withstand the crushing pressure, near-freezing temperatures, and corrosive seawater found at depths below 200 metres. DuRACS will develop a new generation of cementitious materials engineered specifically for these extreme conditions. The project combines materials design, mechanical testing, microstructural analysis, and numerical modelling across six work packages over 36 months. The most promising formulations will be tested at field sites off Japan at depths up to 3,500 metres, with results compared against lab experiments and simulations. If successful, these durable materials could enable offshore wind foundations, nuclear waste repositories, and carbon capture storage facilities to operate safely for decades in deep-sea environments. The research also opens the door to longer-lasting marine infrastructure that most people never see but that underpins future clean energy systems.
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The deep sea poses major challenges to construction engineering because of a combination of extreme environmental factors: ocean depths typically greater than 200 mm, high water pressure, low temperature and aggressive seawater composition. Recent studies have shown that cement and concrete materials designed for conventional structures can degrade rapidly when exposed to the deep sea and are inadequate for demanding applications that require long service lives. However, the requirement for future sustainable energy production such as offshore wind power, nuclear power generation and waste disposal, and geological carbon capture and storage facilities, means that there is an increasingly urgent need for advanced materials and construction technologies that are suitable for deep-sea applications. DuRACS will fill this critical gap by developing a new generation of advanced cementitious materials for the construction of durable and resilient structures in marine environment, in particular deep-sea infrastructure applications. The research programme consists of six interlinked work packages running over 36 months. It combines material selection, design and development, laboratory-based testing of mechanical properties, microstructure and durability, numerical modelling, and thermodynamic modelling to evaluate and improve candidate materials. The final work package will test the most promising materials in deep sea field sites in Japan at depths up to 3500 m. Field data will be correlated to lab-based experiments and simulations, and the findings disseminated widely to the industry and scientific communities in open-access publications. We will engage with our industry partners throughout the project to ensure practical relevance of the developed materials and leverage their wider industry influence to accelerate impact and uptake. This international partnership will produce new knowledge and material technologies that could lead to significant breakthroughs in the exploration and utilisation of deep-sea resources. The ambitious research laid out in DuRACS will generate the science and engineering needed to unlock the full potential of advanced cementitious materials for deep-sea applications. The collaborative research between leading experts and industry partners from the UK and Japan, if successful, will deliver construction materials that would secure future access to safe, affordable and clean energy for global sustainable development.
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