• Figueiredo, Stefan Chaves
• Romero Rodriguez, Claudia
• Ahmed, Zeeshan Y.
• Bos, Freek

Abstract

<p>Recent years have seen a rapid growth of additive manufacturing methodsfor concrete construction. Potential advantages include reduced materialuse and cost, reduced labor, mass customization and CO2 footprintreduction. None of these methods, however, has yet been able to produceadditively manufactured concrete with material properties suitable forstructural applications, i.e. ductility and (flexural) tensile strength.In order to make additive manufacturing viable as a production methodfor structural concrete, a quality leap had to be made. In the project‘3D Concrete Printing for Structural Applications’, 3 concepts have beenexplored to achieve the required structural performance: applying steelfiber reinforcement to an existing printable concrete mortar,developing a strain-hardening cementitious composite based on PVAfibers, and embedding high strength steel cable as reinforcement in theconcrete filament. Whereas the former produced only an increase inflexural tensile strength, but limited post-peak resistance, the lattertwo provided promising strain hardening behavior, thus opening the roadto a wide range of structural applications of 3D printed concrete.</p>

Topics

• strength
• steel
• composite
• tensile strength
• ductility
• additive manufacturing