Robotic 3D Printing of Mineral Foam for a Lightweight Composite Concrete Slab
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Date
2022
Publication Type
Conference Paper
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yes
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Abstract
This paper presents the design and fabrication of a lightweight composite concrete slab prototype using 3D printing (3DP) of mineral foams. Conventionally, concrete slabs are standardized monolithic elements that are responsible for a large share of used materials and dead weight in concrete framed buildings. Optimized slab designs require less material at the expense of increasing the formwork complexity, required labour, and costs. To address these challenges, foam 3D printing (F3DP) can be used in construction as demonstrated in previous studies for lightweight facade elements. The work in this paper expands this research and uses F3DP to fabricate the freeform stay-in-place formwork components for a material-efficient lightweight ribbed concrete slab with a footprint of 2 x 1.3 m. For this advancement in scale, the robotic fabrication and material processing setup is refined and computational design strategies for the generation of advanced toolpaths developed. The presented composite of hardened mineral foam and fibre-reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete shows how custom geometries can be efficiently fabricated for geometrically complex formwork. The prototype demonstrates that optimized slabs could save up to 72% of total concrete volume and 70% weight. The discussion of results and challenges in this study provides a valuable outlook on the viability of this novel fabrication technique to foster a sustainable and resourceful future construction culture.
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Publication status
published
Book title
POST-CARBON: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference of the Association for Computer- Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) 2022
Journal / series
Volume
2
Pages / Article No.
61 - 70
Publisher
Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia
Event
27th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA 2022)
Edition / version
Methods
Software
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Date collected
Date created
Subject
Mineral foam; Stay-in-place formwork; robotic 3d-printing; concrete composite; SDG 12
Organisational unit
09566 - Dillenburger, Benjamin / Dillenburger, Benjamin
02284 - NFS Digitale Fabrikation / NCCR Digital Fabrication
Notes
Funding
-- - NCCR Digital Fabrication (SNF)
ETH-01 19-2 - 3D printing of functional graded inorganic foam (ETHZ)
ETH-01 19-2 - 3D printing of functional graded inorganic foam (ETHZ)