UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — While the effects of the housing crisis and the environmental impacts of debris generated in the construction sector persist in the United States, two projects led by Penn State Stuckeman School architecture professors in the College of Arts and Architecture have earned funding to develop new methods to address these challenges while also bolstering the manufacturing industry in Pennsylvania.
José Duarte and Benay Gürsoy, both researchers in the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing (SCDC), have received funding through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development’s (DCED) Manufacturing PA Innovation Program, also known as the PA Manufacturing Fellows Initiative, which “leverages the internationally acclaimed science and engineering talent and discovery capacity of all Pennsylvania’s institutions of higher education to help ensure that Pennsylvania remains a national and international leader in manufacturing and achieves the full economic potential for good well-paying manufacturing jobs,” according to the DCED website.
Jose Duarte, “Automated Reinforcement of In-place 3D Printing of Spanning Structures”
Duarte is the principal investigator (PI) on the project, which is an evolution of work he co-leads to develop technologies for 3D printing affordable housing out of concrete with researchers from the College of Engineering in the Additive Construction Lab (AddConLab). The project for which the grant is issued is based on preliminary work done by architecture graduate student and co-PI Ali Baghi during his master’s thesis at Penn State, under co-supervision of Shadi Nazarian, now a professor and the Ralph Hawkins Endowed Chair in Architecture at the University of Texas Arlington; Baghi is now pursuing his doctorate in architecture with a focus on design computing.
“For his master’s thesis, Ali developed a system for embedding cables within 3D-printed concrete filaments, enabling the construction of horizontal slabs and complex roof structures,” said Duarte, director of the SCDC and the Stuckeman Chair in Design Innovation. “With this award, we aim to refine the cable-entraining mechanism and expand its application to reinforced walls, enhancing structural strength and broadening its use."
The team’s manufacturing partner for the grant is X-Hab 3D, a startup company located in State College that was founded by several members from the AddConLab team at Penn State.
Using formwork in building construction accounts for about 40% of concrete construction costs and contradicts the automation of 3D concrete printing as more concrete is used and more skilled labor is needed to carry out the printing. Therefore, Baghi’s research looks to address some of the issues surrounding the viscoelastic nature of printing fresh concrete to allow for in-place formwork-free printing and thus optimal assembly for structural slabs of concrete with less construction waste.
According to Duarte, Baghi’s research focuses specifically on the 3D printing of raised floor slabs, a critical advancement that makes the construction of two-story houses feasible.
Baghi said the team will explore the potential of incorporating different flexible reinforcement materials — cables and mesh — into the concrete extruded filament “so we can determine which method will allow for in-place slab printing that does not require formwork, or molds, with minimal human intervention.”
The final co-PI on the project is Sven Bilén, professor of engineering design, electrical engineering and aerospace engineering, whose expertise in robotic concrete printing systems will allow for the advancement of the current robotic printer used by the team for full-scale, in-place 3D concrete printing of flat slabs.
“Ali is using a systems approach as he extends the current capabilities of 3D concrete printing to include printing of cable-entrained slabs,” Bilén said. “He is immediately applying the processes I taught him in 'EDGN 558: Systems Design,' enabling him to make significant advances in implementing this challenging system.”
Nathan Brown, assistant professor of architectural engineering who specializes in data-driven methods for early-stage computational building design, also serves on the team and will focus on finite element analysis — which is a computer-aided engineering tool used to predict how structures and components will behave under various conditions
Also joining the team is Sanjay Joshi, professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering, who will bring his expertise in additive manufacturing, process planning and control systems to help design experiments, parameterization of process and material factors and development of custom devices needed for the process.
"Manufacturing process development is essential for transforming product designs into scalable production methods,” Joshi said. “Optimizing process variables is important because it directly impacts product quality, and it improves process consistency and repeatability needed in an industrial process.”
According to Duarte, the ultimate goal of the 3D concrete printing work being done at Penn State is to enable the complete 3D printing of homes — including foundations, walls, slabs and roofs.
“The system for 3D concrete printing was initially proposed for the NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge and subsequently developed at X-Hab 3D,” he said. This work proposed in the grant expands this system by enabling the 3D printing of raised floor slabs, which significantly enhances design flexibility within the field of 3D printed construction."