The intelligent concrete®: A new, economical technique for architectural shielding of buildings

An innovative technique is presented for global shielding of new or renovated large facilities, whereas ordinary concrete is replaced by special filament-loaded concrete plus a steel mesh surface covering, resulting in a superior Shielding Effectiveness. The screen-mesh provides excellent reflection characteristics below ≈ 100MHz, progressively replaced by the absorption losses of metallic fibers that takes over above 50-100MHz. Besides the material itself, this "intelligent concrete®" offers the advantage of being incorporated while the prime building work is in progress, using techniques that impede very little the classical construction routines, and still result in a facility whose shielding performances, reaching 50-60dB, are widely sufficent for the needs of critical sites. An ensemble of specific mouting hardware for the interior finition is also described that allows to take advantage of the material properties without the seams and penetration leakages often found in such applications. © 2017 IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine.