Polytorx: Making an Impact on Infrastructure
For at least 2,000 years, human beings have used concrete to build roads, bridges and a multitude of other structures. But as engineers are quick to point out, concrete is brittle and prone to fail catastrophically under tensile loading. Which is why suppliers often add reinforcing materials to make concrete behave more like steel.
In the early-1990s, UM Civil Engineering Professor Antoine E. Naaman began experimenting with new shapes of fibers for concrete reinforcement. By 1997, when civil engineering graduate student Luke Pinkerton joined Naaman's lab as part of a work-study assignment, the research team had developed a screw-like steel form with better anchoring properties than traditional reinforcement materials. Ultimately, Naaman and his team devised Helix™ -a toothpick-sized, triangular-shaped, twisted steel fiber proven to increase the tensile strength of concrete by a factor of five.
In 2002, a few years after the Helix™ technology was awarded a first patent, Pinkerton enrolled in an MBA program at Georgia Tech with the idea of helping his faculty mentor build a business around the new technology. During the year that followed, Pinkerton's business plan won two major competitions. In the summer of 2003, the engineer-turned-businessman found himself back in Ann Arbor with a scholarship to the Ann Arbor IT Zone Boot Camp program. There, he met investor Bill Orabone, who worked closely with Naaman, Pinkerton and the Tech Transfer staff to launch a company known as Polytorx in June of 2003. Interns from UM Tech Transfer's TechStart program provided business research expertise to help the start-up through its first, formative months.
Sales of Helix™ are climbing rapidly. "Numerous pilot programs are underway to test Helix™ in municipal and commercial applications," Pinkerton says. "Also, a phase-II, $600,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the federal government will enable us to work with University of Michigan scientists to develop new, highly targeted applications."
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