Additive Manufacturing of Large Coreless Filament Wound Composite Elements for Building Construction.

Digitization and automation are essential tools to increase productivity and close significant added-value deficits in the building industry. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process that promises to impact all aspects of building construction profoundly. Of special interest in AM is an in-depth understanding of material systems based on their isotropic or anisotropic properties. The presented research focuses on fiber-reinforced polymers, with anisotropic mechanical properties ideally suited for AM applications that include tailored structural reinforcement. This article presents a cyber-physical manufacturing process that enhances existing robotic coreless Filament Winding (FW) methods for glass and carbon fiber-reinforced polymers. Our main contribution is the complete characterization of a feedback-based, sensor-informed application for process monitoring and fabrication data acquisition and analysis. The proposed AM method is verified through the fabrication of a large-scale demonstrator. The main finding is that implementing AM in construction through cyber-physical robotic coreless FW leads to more autonomous prefabrication processes and unlocks upscaling potential. Overall, we conclude that material-system-aware communication and control are essential for the efficient automation and design of fiber-reinforced polymers in future construction.

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© Serban Bodea et al. 2022; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

S.B., P.M., G.T.G., and A.M. declare that they have no known competing interests, competing financial interests, funding interests, employment interests, personal relationships, or other competing interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.