Energy Efficient Design for 3D Printed Earth Architecture

Abstract

Additive manufacturing with mud has the potential to reintroduce traditional materials within our contemporary design culture, answering the current demands of sustainability, energy efficiency and cost in construction. Building upon previous research, this study proposes the design and test of real-scale wall elements that aim to take advantage of both the novel material fabrication process as well as the significant thermodynamic properties of the material to achieve a performative passive material system for bioclimatic architecture. Although this project is still at an early stage, the presented study demonstrates the potential of combining 3D printing of mud with performance analysis and simulation for the optimization of a wall prototype.

Additive Manufacturing of Earth-Based Materials: A Literature Review on Mortar Composition, Extrusion, and Processing Earth

“…The next project of the same group was TerraPerforma, where the material was described as “mud stabilized with fibers, sand and proteins”. It was a mortar with non-uniform shrinkage but higher than 7% of the initial extruded size and low strength (compressive strength < 0.2 MPa after 6 h) [ 41 ]. Digital Adobe was the tallest project executed by the IAAC group; it involved assembling modular blocks made of mortar based on clay, water, aggregates, and bio-based additives that were previously printed and cured.…”

“…Figure 5 illustrates two common problems that frequently happen with rectangular nozzles when changing direction. The geometry of the object can influence shrinkage, as observed in the TerraPerforma project [ 41 ]; depending on the pattern and radius, resistance to cracks can be improved. Analyzing the bibliography, a gap was identified in the analysis of large-scale printed objects produced with clay materials in terms of their drying and shrinkage effects and mechanical performance.…”

Trends and opportunities of using local sustainable building materials in the Middle East and North Africa region

“…Even if digital earth construction is still in its early development in comparison to digital concrete, some scientific works have shown their potential and demonstrated the technical concept [40][41][42][43][44] and some industrial initiative have shown their applicability as a promising construction methods. In these works, digital earth relies on the adaptation of the 3D printing by extrusion/deposition methods to earthbased materials.…”

Additive Manufacturing Technologies in Restoration

“…It is usually clay based. Among the most effective experimentations we can find are Woven Clay (Friedman, Kim, and Mesa 2014), Pylos (Dubor, Cabay, and Chronis 2018), and InFormed Ceramics (Ko et al 2018) projects.…”