Cement laminates with ultra-high flexural strength and fracture toughness

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cement laminates with ultra-high flexural strength and fracture toughness

AU - Wang, Yuhuan

AU - Bao, Yi

AU - Meng, Weina

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

PY - 2026/7

Y1 - 2026/7

N2 - Conventional cement-based materials suffer from low flexural strength and low toughness, limiting their mechanical performance. Inspired by the architecture of nacre—renowned for exceptional flexural strength and toughness achieved via hierarchical microstructures and the synergistic interplay of aragonite and polymers—this paper introduces a strategy for engineering cement laminates with a bioinspired “brick-and-mortar" hierarchical microstructure. The resulting cement laminate achieves a remarkable flexural strength of 79.1 MPa and toughness of 15.5 MJ/m3, representing unprecedented enhancement of 11-fold and 3,695-fold over cement, respectively. In-situ cement hydration creates meso-scale building blocks that function as “bricks” with polyvinyl alcohol forming intra-polymers within each block. Polyacrylamide is used as an inter-polymer via in-situ polymerization, serving as the “mortar” that binds the brick and ensures the homogeneous dispersion of the polymer between them. Experimental results demonstrate that the intra-polymers effectively suppress crack initiation, while the inter-polymers arrest and bridge propagating cracks, dissipating energy via multi-modal deformation mechanisms. This bioinspired fabrication strategy for cement laminates advances the development of high-performance, crack-resistant biomimetic materials for the construction industry.

AB - Conventional cement-based materials suffer from low flexural strength and low toughness, limiting their mechanical performance. Inspired by the architecture of nacre—renowned for exceptional flexural strength and toughness achieved via hierarchical microstructures and the synergistic interplay of aragonite and polymers—this paper introduces a strategy for engineering cement laminates with a bioinspired “brick-and-mortar" hierarchical microstructure. The resulting cement laminate achieves a remarkable flexural strength of 79.1 MPa and toughness of 15.5 MJ/m3, representing unprecedented enhancement of 11-fold and 3,695-fold over cement, respectively. In-situ cement hydration creates meso-scale building blocks that function as “bricks” with polyvinyl alcohol forming intra-polymers within each block. Polyacrylamide is used as an inter-polymer via in-situ polymerization, serving as the “mortar” that binds the brick and ensures the homogeneous dispersion of the polymer between them. Experimental results demonstrate that the intra-polymers effectively suppress crack initiation, while the inter-polymers arrest and bridge propagating cracks, dissipating energy via multi-modal deformation mechanisms. This bioinspired fabrication strategy for cement laminates advances the development of high-performance, crack-resistant biomimetic materials for the construction industry.

KW - Flexural strength

KW - Nacre-inspired cement laminates

KW - Structured composite materials

KW - Toughness

KW - “Brick-and-mortar” microstructure

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105034578876

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105034578876#tab=citedBy

U2 - 10.1016/j.cemconcomp.2026.106582

DO - 10.1016/j.cemconcomp.2026.106582

M3 - Article

SN - 0958-9465

VL - 170

JO - Cement and Concrete Composites

JF - Cement and Concrete Composites

M1 - 106582

ER -