The community is founded on the belief that additive manufacturing significantly impacts industries, societies, energy consumption, and carbon emissions. This technology has numerous applications in aerospace, automotive, medical, art, retail, consumer goods, and now, construction.
However, what underlying concepts, processes, materials, benefits, and limitations must be addressed? Several current issues confront additive manufacturing and its applications, including material challenges, cost, intellectual property, and sustainability, remain unresolved.
Researchers and educators within the learning community aim to introduce a disruptive approach by exploring material technology, processes, machine tools, applications in natural and applied sciences, and design management. This goal will be achieved through interactive cross-campus guest lectures and student projects that investigate and redefine the design and use of additive manufactured objects in our societies.
This learning community intends to provide students and participants with a comprehensive understanding of additive manufacturing, its inherent processes, and recent advancements, as well as the challenges that must be addressed to fully realise its potential.
Learning Community activities
Past Events
- 3D printing of construction materials: challenges and issues
November 6th 2023
By Alexandre Pierre (CY Cergy Paris Université)
This guest lecture will show the last news and insights of 3D printing projects in the construction area. Nevertheless, this process can have impacts on costs, training of construction actors, choice of materials, and also on the environment. This guest lecture will therefore demonstrate the potential of 3D printing of construction materials.
- On the mechanical behaviour of 3D printed honeycomb structures
May 11th 2023
Lect. dr. eng. Vasile Cojocaru (Babeș-Bolyai University).
The additive manufacturing technologies facilitates the development of components with a cellular core structure. These structures reduce the weight of parts and the material consumption. The presentation focuses on the analysis of the mechanical behavior of some structures with cellular core. Case studies of loading along the principal axes of inertia and asymmetric loading are analysed.
- Textile Reinforced Concrete: An introduction to material innovations enhancing novel structures
December 5th 2022
Prof. Tine Tysmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
As the most-used man-made material across the globe, concrete is everywhere, but this popular building material presents significant challenges related to its huge environmental impact and limited durability properties. Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) could provide a solution to these challenges, and hence could potentially revolutionize the way concrete is currently being used as a construction material.
In TRC, the traditional steel reinforcement is fully replaced by fibre textiles. The use of this innovative reinforcement has two important advantages: (i) the concrete cover, traditionally required to prevent the steel reinforcement from corroding, can be omitted and hence the thickness of concrete elements can be drastically reduced, and (ii) the flexibility of the fibre textile reinforcement allows to easily manufacture cutting-edge concrete structures with complex shapes. This introductory lecture situates Textile reinforced concrete as a structural material compared to polymer-matrix composites and steel-reinforced concrete. It discusses also several interesting novel structural concepts in which the material is used at its best.
- Overview of additive manufacturing in the construction sector
November 22nd 2022.
Associate Professor Alexandre Pierre (CY Cergy Paris Université).
The European construction sector produces almost 2 billion tons of waste per year. Many projects that use digital or automated processing of concrete emerged during the last decade. This layer-by-layer production allows high complex structures without the need of formwork. This could lead to a high material saving potential at same load bearing capacity. However, the digital fabrication has not been fully transferred to concrete construction industry although additive manufacturing (3D printing) processes of concrete and cement-based materials could bring architectural and structural innovation. We propose in this guest-lecture an overview of the additive manufacturing of construction materials.
How to Get Involved
(Students and educators)
Contact the community lead Alexandre Pierre (alexandre.pierre@cyu.fr) or the local facilitator Tomy Quenet (tomy.quenet@cyu.fr).