Bibliographic analysis on 3D printing in the building and construction industry: Printing systems, material properties, challenges, and future trends

Abstract

In recent years, significant advancements in the development of large-scale 3D printers and construction materials have been made to meet the demand for industrial scale 3D printing construction. It is significant to construct the buildings and structural components by using 3D concrete printing. Additive manufacturing (AM) main benefits are freedom of design, construction waste reduction, mass customization, and ability to manufacture the complex structures. The major issues including the optimization of printing material which possess the suitable properties for 3D concrete printing. However, this technology towards the green building construction seems to improve the conventional methods by reducing the requirement of human resource, high investment cost, and formworks. The research community's interest in 3D printing for architecture and construction has grown significantly over the last few years. This paper review the latest trend of research and state of the art technologies in 3D printing in building and construction by analyzing the publications from 2002 to 2022. Based on aforementioned analysis of publications, printing methods, concrete printing systems and influence of constituent’s materials and chemical admixtures on concrete material properties are briefly discussed. Finally, this paper discussed the challenges and limitations of current systems, as well as potential future work to improve their capability and print quality.

Advancement in Sustainable 3D Concrete Printing: A Review on Materials, Challenges, and Current Progress in Australia

“…The existing construction workers require re-training and learning new skills such as modelling, communicating with robots, operating, regulating, and maintaining 3D printers, with an in-depth understanding of printing parameters and concrete thixotropic behavior. These skills cannot be replaced with a lower-skill workforce [156][157][158][159]. These are more challenging in Australia's remote communities with lower literacy and numeracy skills [150].…”