Title: Numerical Simulation of Concrete 3D Printing

Author(s): Elham Ramyar

Publication: Web Session

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Date: 10/17/2021

Abstract:
In recent decades, the employment of automatized technologies and advanced materials has revolutionized the concrete construction industry. Of great importance is concrete 3D printing (concrete additive manufacturing) with its twofold challenge. On the one hand, new materials for use with current 3D printing technologies need to be more developed; On the other hand, 3D printing technologies need to be adapted to the rheological characteristics of concrete. While the majority of researchers are working on developing novel and appropriate concrete mixes, as well as 3D printing construction technologies, only a few and rather limited applicable computational models are available in the literature for recently proposed printable concrete mixtures. For the purpose of control, prediction, optimization of the printing process, material flow, and the final configuration of the printed objects, the 3D printing process must be monitored with a numerical model. For this purpose, the primary objective of this presentation is to present the development of a numerical model for simulation of concrete 3D printing in which the motion of the main printer component (nozzle) is synchronized with the material generator (DEM particle generator). Upon the generation of DEM particles, a Discrete Fresh Concrete (DFC), as the most important component of this numerical model, governs the microscopic rheological and tribological behavior of inter-particle and surface-particle (nozzle-particle) interactions. DFC is a novel discrete simulation model for fresh printable concrete appropriate for 3D printing applications. With the use of DFC, numerical simulations of ICAR Rheometer, and slump tests of fresh printable concrete are in complete agreement with relevant experimental tests.