3D Fiber Reinforced Concrete Printing of Houses in Wujiazhuang, China

Abstract

Nowadays, with the rapid development of 3D printing technology, more and more applications of this technology can be seen in daily life, and architecture is one of the important directions. There are already a lot of creative buildings completed by 3D printing in the world, and many of them have already been put into use. One of the big challenges of this technology is that since the properties of freshly extruded concrete are not high enough, it becomes necessary to use reinforcement strategies to make the concrete meet the requirements of 3D printing. One of the common reinforcement strategies is achieved by adding fibers to the concrete.

In this study, through finite element modeling and analysis of a 3D concrete printed farmhouse located in Wujiazhuang, China, the whole process of 3D printing of the farmhouse, as well as the internal forces of the structure when it enters into use after the printing is completed was analyzed, and the effect of the application of fiber reinforced concrete in the whole process of 3D printing, as well as the optimization strategy was shown in detail.

The literature study summarizes the current state of development of additive manufacturing and 3D printing, as well as the different types classified through the process; introduces FEM and describes its application in 3D printing; describes the process of making fiber reinforced concrete and its advantages over the material properties of normal concrete; reveals the changes in material properties of materials used for 3D printing in the early stages; and describes the field situation of the Wujiazhuang farmhouse and the printing process.

The deformation and stress distribution of the whole structure under the use state had been analyzed by linear static analysis in finite element software, and the material distribution of the structure had been preliminarily determined. After that, the whole printing process of the structure was analyzed by stage and structural nonlinear analysis, and the key issues such as how to simulate the truss structure wall and what parameters will affect the number of printable layers of the structure were analyzed by building multiple models. Finally, the material distribution and printing solution of the structure were given.

The results given were further modified by continuing to reduce the deformation of the structure to meet the code requirements for the displacement of the formwork structure. Several methods were given to minimize the deformation to meet the code requirements from two different perspectives: the geometry of the structure and the material properties.

The reliability of the modeling in this study and the accuracy of the results were verified by using finite element software modeling to analyze a 3D printing model from a paper and comparing the results. The conclusions of this study and the possible applications of the conclusions in 3D printing were finally given, as well as possible directions for future follow-up research.