An Experimental Testing Procedure to Assess the Buildability Performance of 3D Printed Concrete Elements

Abstract

Digital fabrication of concrete products represents a breakthrough in the field of civil engineering, revolutionizing the way of conceiving and create architectural/structural elements. Being a new technology, the designers have very few tools to predict and control the time dependent structural response of printed concrete elements, either during and after the production process; furthermore, no testing guidelines exist yet in this specific field. An experimental testing procedure is herein presented to establish the buildability performances of 3D printed concrete elements as a function of the printing layout (e.g. single layer width or thickness). Based on experimental outcomes of uniaxial compression tests performed on cylindrical sample of fresh printable mortar, an analytical model is adopted to estimate the maximum number of concrete layers which can be stacked during a generic printing process before the failure; plastic yielding in compression and self-buckling failure modes are considered to this aim.