3D Printing: Let Dreams Shine Into Reality

In the Internet era, digitalization has spawned changes and innovations in various industries, including the construction industry.

"At present, intelligent construction has become an inevitable trend in the development of the construction industry and an important starting point for transformation and upgrading. It is one of the effective ways to solve the low efficiency, high pollution and high energy consumption of the construction industry. As an innovative intelligent building technology, concrete 3D printing technology has ushered in unprecedented development opportunities." Recently, Xu Weiguo, a professor of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University, said in an interview with China Building Materials News that the concrete 3D printing technology itself is not a single technology, but an integration of technologies, including digital architecture design, robot system, printing technology, material technology, etc. The advantages lie in its high efficiency, template free, labor saving, material saving, low carbon and environmental protection, It is not only suitable for the design and construction of traditional houses, but also can realize the construction of various beautiful irregular curved bodies. It has great prospects in the future.

Xu Weiguo, a rural house built with concrete 3D printing technology

3D printing promotes the development of digital architecture

Xu Weiguo has been engaged in digital design and digital construction research since 2003. Over the years, he has promoted the rapid development of digital architecture in China through teaching, engineering, curation, publishing and other channels.

Speaking of his dream of digital architecture, Xu Weiguo said that construction is a process and a system. At present, the system includes architects, structural designers, plumbing and electrical engineers, and construction teams, which are separated from each other. However, in the information society, the production mode has changed fundamentally, and each link should reflect the characteristics of intelligent construction.

In order to realize this dream, Xu Weiguo's team has developed robot 3D printing concrete construction technology based on digital architecture design and robot automatic control system, 3D printing technology and special concrete material technology.

The concrete component being printed by Xu Weiguo

"This technology is an intelligent construction technology. Its construction process includes algorithm generation creative design, digital morphology modeling, printing path planning, printing program coding, virtual printing construction simulation, on-site in-situ printing, or on-site prefabricated printing and assembly. It not only integrates the whole process of house or landscape construction digitally, but also divides it into two parts: virtual construction and physical printing construction. During the construction process, continuous digital information Information flow and material construction flow complement each other, forming an integrated intelligent construction process. "

Xu Weiguo pointed out that this technology involves the participation of different industries, including the creative design of architecture based on algorithm generation, the development of path planning and control software, the integrated manufacturing of robots and printing equipment, the mixed production of printing materials, and the digital construction site of construction. Its promotion and use will not only upgrade the traditional housing construction industry, but also drive the formation of a new digital construction industry chain.

Must have the concept of generalized concrete

As an innovative building and environment intelligent construction technology, the greatest advantage of robot 3D printing concrete construction technology is to save manpower, improve efficiency, reduce cost, and ensure quality.

In this regard, Xu Weiguo pointed out that intelligent construction will promote the transformation and upgrading of China's construction industry. As an important way of intelligent construction, 3D printing will play an important role in the intelligent development of engineering construction. Because of the use of intelligent systems and intelligent equipment, the construction accuracy of this technology has been greatly improved, thus ensuring the construction quality. Moreover, the digital design based on algorithm generation uses intelligent robot arms that can move in space to build. This technology can not only build traditional architectural forms, but also build a variety of rich organic architectural forms. It is understood that this technology is being applied industrially, and the world's largest 3D printing concrete green park has been built in Bao'an District, Shenzhen for the first time. So far, this technology has been applied to new rural housing, Kenya 3D printing affordable housing, pedestrian bridge, library and other projects.

Construction site Xu Weiguo/drawings provided

"Although there are still many bottlenecks to be solved in 3D concrete printing construction, and the competition in technology development and practical application in this field is increasingly fierce, the biggest obstacle to this technology is that people do not understand this technology." In view of the current doubts about the 3D printing technology of concrete, Xu Weiguo believes that the proportion of concrete itself can change, and different proportions will lead to changes in concrete performance, such as ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC). Once this material is applied to 3D printing, 3D printing of concrete will have more possibilities. "This is an era of cooperation. To promote the development of technology, all industries need to work together. In this process, people must have the concept of generalized concrete." Xu Weiguo said.

Promoting the improvement of rural human settlements

During the interview, Xu Weiguo's team was busy with the rural housing project in Guizhou. Xu Weiguo's team brought a lot of innovative technologies to the farm house project site, whether it was a model house for farmers in Wujiazhuang, Xiahuayuan, Hebei Province, low-income housing in Africa, or a farm house project in Guizhou Province.

In this regard, Xu Weiguo said that rural reconstruction is an important task for the current social development, but many rural reconstruction only achieved the improvement of the public environment, such as building roads, laying municipal pipelines, and redecorating the appearance of residential buildings. In fact, the living space and indoor living conditions of these rural houses have not changed substantially. "Robot 3D printing concrete mobile platform" and "rapid construction system of concrete houses" can be used to rebuild rural houses one by one in an organic way, making contributions to rural housing construction.

"Since 2003, I have been engaged in the research of digital design. In my opinion, the biggest feature of our team is to move the research from the laboratory to the construction site." Xu Weiguo believes that the research in the laboratory is far from the application in the actual project, and sometimes the technology that is very successful in the laboratory cannot be applied in the actual project. The key to Xu Weiguo's team's continuous achievements is to carry out research and development in actual projects and find the best system in hundreds of experiments.