Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has designed a concrete printer which has been used for research since 2015, and its part of a research project on 3D printing concrete. This project is supported by a group of private companies from the concrete construction industry.
On Friday June 24th, the first series of their demonstration sessions started in the Vertigo building at the Department of the Built Environment, where over 70 people attended. The printer itself was shown in action, printing objects that were parts of current research projects. A pavilion has been designed, created and assembled by a group of students, with help from some of the partner companies:
- Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix
- Van Wijnen
- Witteveen+Bos
It took several months of initial testing before research could actually start for the group of PhD and 4th/5th year MSc students. The students have been working on methods of printing as well as experimenting with the print medium before and after curing. They have also been investigating the impact of print parameters such as the printer head speed. The results will be used to create a model that can work out the behaviour of the concrete whilst it is printing.
Aside from the fundamental research into material behaviour, the experiments on the possibilities of the techniques of 3D concrete printing are being explored further. As a result, the pavilion has been created in a scale that is relevant for the building industry. It reaches 2 m in height, and measures approximately 3,5 x 2,5 m in plan. The pavilion shows the freedom of form that can be achieved without complex, time-consuming molds. Simultaneously, it also introduces more questions, how do we connect printed elements? Is the print surface always going to be horizontal, or are there other possibilities? How do we guarantee the structural safety? This pavilion sets a tone for future research.
