
Concrete Additive Manufacturing

Quantitative evaluation of binder permeation
Previous studies have incorporated fluorescent dye to identify W/C ratio of concrete after curing at the nanoscale. We mix fluorescent dye at different concentrations to water and apply it to print of one layer. We seek to see if the intensity in color of the dye can reveal water content during the print process and after the concrete is set.



Water distribution variables
We experiment with different controlled water distribution patterns to minimize bleed while saturating target shape. Through the manual trials, we have asserted that the cement : water ratio for layerwise binding to be 1: 0.06. We predetermine the total water mass for the casting area and per layer. We want to find the adequate frequency of water deposition, and amount of water deposited per dropping that would saturate the target shape of the layer, allowing the material to bind into the intended shape.

We devise a multi-nozzle template with varying number of openings for 1 ml syringes. The total mass of water is divided by the total number of openings resulting in the following variations of water distribution. (a)using the template with more openings, a smaller amount of water would be deposited more frequently, closer together. On the other hand, (b)if the template has fewer openins, a larger amount of water would be placed per opening.





Material - Computational Simulation


Custom Grasshopper component
for water and cement particle attraction dynamics simulation




