Principal investigator: Jose Duarte
University: Pennsylvania State University
Industry partner: X-hab 3D, LLC
Developments in 3D concrete printing (3DCP) offer promising solutions to housing crises by enabling faster, customizable, and affordable construction. However, printing spanning elements remains a challenge due to the viscoelastic behavior of fresh concrete, which, while necessary for pumpability, limits slab printing. As a result, most 3DCP projects focus on walls, requiring skilled labor and transportation for trusses or precast slabs to cover them. Solutions like formwork, corbeling, multidirectional printing, and post-printing assembly attempt to address these limitations but introduce challenges such as material waste, higher concrete consumption, limited span lengths, and longer lead times. Our preliminary research demonstrated that in-process reinforcement with Kevlar cables can partially mitigate these issues. However, a knowledge gap remains in bonding strength. The research team aims to address this by using more suitable reinforcement with better bonding strength. The proposed technique can also be applied to 3DCP of durable blast-resistance walls in defense architecture.