Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) in Netherlands reports the following:
Today the Built Environment department’s concrete printer starts printing the world’s first 3D printed reinforced, pre-stressed concrete bridge. The cycle bridge will be part of a new section of ring road around Gemert in which the BAM Infra construction company is using innovative techniques.
One of the advantages of printing a bridge is that much less concrete is needed than in the conventional technique in which a mold is filled. By contrast, a printer deposits only the concrete where it is needed. This has benefits since in the production of cement a lot of CO2 is released and much less of this is needed for printed concrete. Another benefit lies in freedom of form: the printer can make any desired shape, and no wooden molding frames are needed.
An extra detail is that the researchers in the group of Theo Salet, professor of concrete construction, have succeeded in developing a process to also print the steel reinforcement at the same time. When laying a strip of concrete the concrete printer adds a steel cable so that the bridge is ‘pre-stressed’ so that no tensile stress can occur in the concrete, because this is something that concrete is not able to cope with adequately.
This is quite a feat! By including steel reinforcement and the ability to pre-stress, 3D printing is truly beginning to become a viable option for certain projects. What is especially fascinating to me is how this technology might be able to in the future avoid a common issue in structural concrete erection: congestion.
I have about $15-million in claims sitting on my virtual desk right now in which reinforcing congestion resulted in delays that had a material impact on the job.
Here’s a video:
AEC Forensics 