Limits and Potential of 3D Printing Technologies for Construction of Concrete Shells

Abstract:

Concrete shells are a very effective type of building structures due to their ability to bridge large spans with minimal construction thickness. This type of building structures built on the medieval vaulting techniques and, regarding the use of reinforced concrete over the last 100 years, it has overcome the limitations of the masonry vaulting technologies and enabled to increase the span of structures to tens of meters. The construction technology to realize concrete shells using monolithic casting into formwork is besides abovementioned advantages characterized by high labour and thanks to the cost and manufacturing intensity of double curved formwork panels it allows economical realization of only selected structural geometries. Its considerable limitation is, besides the costly production of double curvature formwork, also the laborious installation of formwork and falsework structures. The solution seems to be in line with the upcoming transition to Construction 4.0 robotizing the construction technology of shells that could create a similar increase in productivity and design possibilities as was the technological transition between vaults and shells. One of the promising technologies of robotic production seems to be digital fabrication methods and, in particular, 3D printing or in other words additive manufacturing. This wasteless technology, which has been used to date for experimental projects mainly for the realization of vertical bearing structures, has, despite the first attempts at realizing vaults, a number of technological limitations. In this article, authors aim to summarize and indicate possible constraints of on site 3D printing of domes. They further indicate the possible ways to overcome these limitations and suggest two different means of on site 3D printing of hemispherical dome and the dome based on the catenary profile using extrusion nozzles with different profiles. Finally they discuss the Eurocode requirements for concrete shells and suggest technological solutions for on site 3D printed shells in terms of structural reinforcement.

• Periodical: Solid State Phenomena (Volume 292)
• Pages: 249-256
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/SSP.292.249
• Online since: June 2019
• Authors: Michal Kovářík*, Pavel Svoboda, Henri Hubertus Achten
• Keywords: 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Concrete Shells, Concrete Structures, Construction Technology

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