Concrete is the most used building material in the world. Its success can be linked back to its mouldability, durability and low cost. Unfortunately, current conventional concrete pedestrian bridge designs do not benefit from these key features and still require bulky shaped cross-sections, whereby part of the concrete does not contribute to the structural strength. This study assesses the potential reduction of material use by combining shot-crete 3D printing (SC3DP) with the application of textile formworks for the production of form found pedestrian bridges, instead of the conventional design and fabrication process.
The present thesis looks at conventional concrete pedestrian bridge design and form found concrete for it examined for four different spans: 5 m, 10 m, 20 m and 45 m. The designs are tested for full vertical loading, asymmetric vertical loading, and buckling. The amount of material required for each span and load case are determined and compared with each other. The results show that the form found concrete pedestrian bridge designs only re-quire a fraction (between 13.0% and 20.0%) of the amount of concrete used for the same design with conventional approaches. The form found concrete pedestrian bridge designs become more material efficient than the conventional designs as the span increases. Dur-ing the calculation process it was ascertained that the conventional concrete pedestrian bridge design cannot reach spans larger than 20 m. It was also observed that the concrete thickness of the shorter span form found concrete pedestrian bridges (5 m and 10 m) is governed by the asymmetric load case and the concrete thickness of the longer span form found concrete pedestrian bridges (20 m and 45 m) is governed by the buckling case. Over-all it can be concluded that the form found concrete pedestrian bridge design is superior with regards to the material use, when compared to the conventional concrete pedestrian bridge design.