3D-printable engineered cementitious composites (3DP-ECC): Fresh and hardened properties

By Kequan Yu, Wes McGee, T. Ng, He-hua Zhu, Victor C. Li. Cement and Concrete Research, 2021

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract 3D printing (3DP) is an emerging digital construction method for concrete materials. A major impediment to efficient 3D concrete printing (3DCP) is the need for steel reinforcement, the placement of which is incompatible with the 3DP process. Unlike plain concrete, ductile self-reinforced engineered cementitious composite (ECC) holds promise to remove the dependence on steel reinforcement. The objective of this research is to develop a 3D-printable ECC (3DP-ECC). The fresh rheological and hardened mechanical properties of 3DP-ECC are investigated. The robotically printed tensile specimens demonstrated the familiar multiple microcracking and strain-hardening behavior of conventionally cast ECC. Significant orthotropy is revealed in the compressive properties. The interface between printed layers is found to be toughened by a printed groove-tongue joint. The developed 3DP-ECC was used to print a twisted column with 150 layers, reaching a height of 1.5 m. This research lays the groundwork for efficient robotically 3D-printed structures of complex shapes.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Building and Construction, Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d62e7866020d487e88739488f2c5c5429063d83