Abstract:Biocementation is a green and low-carbon building technology that has emerged in recent decades. It shows promising prospects in foundation treatment, slope treatment, and concrete crack repair. Biocementation involves complex bio-physical-chemical dynamic processes, requiring developing a real-time visualization system to figure out the regimes of reaction and reinforcement. The necessity of developing the visualization system for biocementation is analyzed. A framework of the visualization test system is established for biocementation, composed of a solution transport system, microreactor, observation system, and environmental control and monitoring system. The solution transport system is used for solution delivery and fixing of boundary conditions. The microreactor is used as a mold for reaction. The observation system is used to visualize the reaction process. The environmental control and monitoring system is used to control the environmental conditions such as temperature and light and collect the feedback data including fluid pressure. The methods for test data acquisition are based on image processing associated with the data logged by the environmental monitors. Analytical approaches are also proposed to deal with the test data. Results show that the microbial reinforcement visualization system can not only directly obtain the image of the reinforcement process and the data of the osmotic pressure change, but also can be combined with microscopic test methods such as scanning electron microscopy for material characterization and micro-mechanical characteristics analysis. It can be used for microscopic real-time research of microbial reinforcement, providing a new method for the study of the microscopic mechanism of microbial reinforcement, which is conducive to revealing the mechanism of microbial reinforcement and laying the foundation for promoting its application.