Developments in construction-scale additive manufacturing processes

Abstract

Additive manufacturing in construction is beginning to move from an architect"s modelling tool to delivering full-scale architectural components and elements of buildings such as walls and facades. This paper discusses large-scale additive manufacturing processes that have been applied in the construction and architecture arena and focuses on "Concrete Printing", an automated extrusion based process. The wet properties of the material are critical to the success of manufacture and a number of new criteria have been developed to classify these process specific parameters. These criteria are introduced and key challenges that face construction scale additive manufacturing are presented.

Additive manufacturing of concrete in construction: potentials and challenges of 3D concrete printing

“…Currently, developments are going so fast that any overview of existing techniques and examples is out-of-date almost as soon as it is published. Nevertheless, Lim et al (2012), Wolfs (2015), and Wu et al (2016) give a sound impression of the development of the state of affairs.…”

“…This is similar to the 40 × 10 mm nozzle applied by the TU/e. The Concrete Printer of Loughborough University uses smaller, circular nozzles of Ø 6-20 mm, resulting in a layer thickness of 6-25 mm (Lim et al 2012), whereas the Contour Crafting reports a layer thickness of 13 mm resulting from a Ø 15 mm nozzle (Hwang and Khoshnevis 2004).…”

“…Until approximately 2012, developments have been steady. Besides Khoshnevis, pioneering work was done by the University of Loughborough (Le et al 2011a, 2011b, Lim et al 2011, 2012Figure 2(b)), Shanghaibased contractor Winsun, and the company Total Kustom in Minnesota, USA. An alternative to working with single, large robots was introduced by the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in 2014 (IAAC 2014;Figure 2(c)).…”

“…In Section 2.2, some consequences of the setting time/slump proportion have been discussed. Lim et al (2012) and Le et al (2011) provided details on the material mix used by the Concrete Printing research group of Loughborough University. It consisted of 54% sand, 36% reactive cementitious compounds, and 10% water by mass (Lim et al 2012).…”

“…Lim et al (2012) and Le et al (2011) provided details on the material mix used by the Concrete Printing research group of Loughborough University. It consisted of 54% sand, 36% reactive cementitious compounds, and 10% water by mass (Lim et al 2012). Le et al (2011) mention that the binder material is a mix of CEM I cement, fly-ash, and undensified silica fume.…”