Digital fabrication and processing of construction materials

Digital fabrication with concrete is a research field that has exploded with interest, particularly within the last half decade. The recent advances in automation and digitalization that have propelled a productivity revolution in the manufacturing sector are now poised to have a similar effect within the construction sector. With additive manufacturing techniques with concrete, the world's most widely used manmade material, custom and material efficient architecture now can more easily be realized by the removal of their greatest impediment: formwork. Formwork construction accounts for the lion's share of construction costs, which grows even greater for these custom, material efficient shapes.

Concrete is a material that lends itself well to additive manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing due to its material characteristics: it is an easily workable material for a time before hardening into a load-bearing, structural material. The study of the rheology of cement and concrete has long had a strong and engaged research community, as controlling concrete rheology up to the point of placement in the formwork is essential. However, its application in formwork-free additive manufacturing now requires it to build its own strength during production, which requires an even higher degree of rheological control, and in particular, set control upon material placement. PCBM, in collaboration with partners in the NCCR Digital Fabrication in Architecture (external page dfab), is well equipped with the knowledge to develop these materials and processes.

The development of these processes also allows for investigation into more fundamental questions with respect to the science of cementitious materials. For example, the development of strength in the transition from a fluid material to a solid material, and how that occurs in a dense, reactive particle suspension, is still not well understood. These types of questions are of prime importance to the success of these digital fabrication processes, and also touch on topics of colloidal dispersions and material chemistry that benefit the greater scientific communities in cement and the rheology of complex particle dispersions.

PCBM and the NCCR Digital Fabrication in Architecture also serve as a hub of information exchange for this burgeoning research field, with the initiation of the RILEM Digital Concrete conference series, the inaugural conference being held at ETH Zurich in 2018.