Designing 3D-printed concrete structures with scaled fabrication models

Abstract

This article proposes using scaled fabrication models to assist the design research of 3D-printed discrete concrete structures where full-scale fabrication tests are costly and time-consuming. A scaled fabrication model (SFM) is a scaled model 3D-printed the same way as in actual construction to reflect its fabrication details and acquire alike layer line textures. The components of a 1:10 SFM can be eas- ily produced by consumer-level desktop 3D printers with minimal modification. SFMs assist the design communication and make possible quick tests of dis- tinct fabrication designs that are hard to assess in digital modeling [Response to 1.1] during the conceptual design phase. A case study of a discrete compression- dominant funicular floor derived from graphic statics is presented to illustrate the contribution of SFM to the design research of force-informed toolpathing where the printing direction of a component is aligned to the principal stress line. The design iterations encompass a sequence of component, partial, and full model SFM printing tests to explore and optimize the fabrication schemes where par- allel, non-parallel, and creased slicing methods to create toolpaths are compared and chosen to adapt different discrete components.