3D‐Printing with steel of a bolted connection

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing seems promising for the steel construction industry, especially for small components with complex shapes. With Wire‐and‐Arc‐Additive‐Manufacturing (WAAM) a process was found which is fast and cheap compared to other Additive Manufacturing processes for metals. Furthermore, arc‐welding is well known in steel construction industry. Bolted head plates are a common connection. Although they are relatively easy to produce, they are uneconomical in load transfer due to straining of the plates which are subject to bending. This type of connection is predestined for Additive Manufacturing. Rethinking the structure by taking into account the potentials of Additive Manufacturing brings a clear advantage compared to the conventional production. Thus, with a material saving of 60 % the same load capacity of the original flat head plate can be achieved. The paper shows how the new production process WAAM can significantly change the shape of structures on the example of a bolted head plate. Therefore, all steps from the original design to the manufactured structure are demonstrated, including the structure finding by using topology optimization, the manufacturing with different parameters and a first testing of the manufactured structures.

Proposal and experimental verification of additive manufactured beam‐column connection designed by topological optimization

“…Currently, the AM processes of structural components in steel, despite being expensive and novel, represent a powerful line of research that operates at the limits of structural design innovation: the properties of the materials, the manufacturing techniques, the transport and installation and execution on site [3]. The main difficulties presented by this manufacturing technique are the dimensional limitations of the AM machines, the precision parameters and the need to consider mold release restrictions, tolerances, minimum thicknesses and angles [4].…”

Support-strategies for Robocasting Ceramic Building Components

“…While some approaches tackle the task of producing full buildings like houses (Koshnevis and Hwang 2006) or bridges (Van der Velden 2019), others focus on highly specialized components like façade-connectors (Mohsen 2020), lost formwork (Burger et al 2020) , fire-protection cladding (Pain 2022) or even hybrid applications (Carvalho, Cruz and Figueiredo 2022). Nowadays, the scope of AM R&D covers most of the materials common in construction such as metal (Erven 2021), concrete (Anton 2020), glass (Seel 2018) and ceramics (de Witte 2022) upon which this article takes a deeper look.…”