New structural engineering possibilities of digital fabrication towards leaner concrete structures

Abstract

The design possibilities of concrete structures are typically tightly constrained by the high costs and material waste of formworks and reinforcement for producing non-conventional shapes. Digital fabrication technologies aim at producing structures with increased degrees of geometrical freedom at little extra cost and avoiding material waste. This might allow (i) revisiting abandoned structural typologies (e.g. shells, folded roofs, ribbed or mushroom slabs) and (ii) exploring new concepts towards leaner construction. In this lunch talk, researchers from the Group of Concrete Structures and Bridge design at ETH Zurich will present recent structural engineering developments within the domain of Digital Fabrication with Concrete, making use of technologies such as 3D concrete printing, knitted textile reinforcement, robotic reinforcement assemblies and 3D formwork printing.