A Review of the Extruder System Design for Large-Scale Extrusion-Based 3D Concrete Printing

Abstract

Extrusion-based 3D concrete printing (E3DCP) has been appreciated by academia and industry as the most plausible candidate for prospective concrete constructions. Considerable research efforts are dedicated to the material design to improve the extrudability of fresh concrete. However, at the time of writing this paper, there is still a lack of a review paper that highlights the significance of the mechanical design of the E3DCP system. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the mechanical design of the E3DCP extruder system in terms of the extruder system, positioning system and advanced fittings, and their effects on the extrudability are also discussed by relating to the extrusion driving forces and extrusion resistive forces which may include chamber wall shear force, shaping force, nozzle wall shear force, dead zone shear force and layer pressing force. Moreover, a classification framework of the E3DCP system as an extension of the DFC classification framework was proposed. The authors reckoned that such a classification framework could assist a more systematic E3DCP system design.

Concrete Additive Manufacturing in Construction: Integration Based on Component-Related Fabrication Strategies

“…Others have focused more on the differences between the AM methods or their underlying material properties [17][18][19]. Furthermore, reviews have been conducted to investigate developments in printing systems [20,21], extruder design [22,23], or reinforcement strategies [24,25]. Additionally, there are comprehensive studies on the digital planning processes for 3D printing [26], possible fields of application [9,[27][28][29], and the impact on the construction market [30].…”