Title:
Numerical Modeling and Experimental Testing of 3D-Printed Cementitious Materials
Author(s):
Sherif Elfass
Publication:
Web Session
Volume:
Issue:
Appears on pages(s):
Keywords:
DOI:
Date:
3/30/2025
Abstract:
The pressure of urbanization and the increasing concerns about climate change are pushing the construction industry to find new solutions for infrastructure development with low environmental impact. Additive construction offers several benefits, including the possibility of creating complex shapes without formwork, reducing labor, and utilizing locally available materials, thus resulting in an optimization of the construction process and less CO2 emission. The performance of 3-D printing systems at both the material and structural level has been extensively studied in recent years. Yet, results remain scattered and challenging to homogenize given the diversity of adopted materials, printing scale and process, and testing protocols. This study introduces a framework for experimentally and numerically evaluating the performance of 3D-printed cementitious materials and systems. Printed mortar samples were constructed and tested under different loading conditions, and their performance was compared to that of traditional cast mortar. The constitutive response and damage patterns of the tested specimens were recorded and analyzed. Concurrently, detailed finite element models were developed explicitly simulating the orthotropic contact properties at the interface between the printed layers. This had a twofold objective: (1) allow an in-depth mechanics-based interpretation of the experimental results, and (2) calibrate the numerical model for subsequent utilization in sensitivity analyses. Preliminary results suggest that ordinary finite element models can be adopted for the analysis of additively constructed structural systems after calibration of subsets of the layers’ interface properties depending on the loading plane, thus relieving the need to employ heavily sophisticated models.