UNM engineers address 3D printing challenges

ARMED with a 3D concrete printer, careful measuring tools, and just the right ingredients, a team at The University of New Mexico in the US has designed what is described as "the construction building blocks of the future" - bendable concrete material, the design of which is officially patented.

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Traditional construction relies on people operating heavy machinery to place steel or wood beams to create a building frame, but the process can be dangerous and expensive. It's just one of the material and manufacturing problems Maryam Hojati, assistant professor in the university's Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, hopes to solve.

Another problem is infrastructure maintenance, which is necessary because of the brittle nature of concrete which suffers cracks. Even concrete reinforced with steel requires ongoing repair, which means regular maintenance on everything from buildings and bridges to sidewalks. A more resilient material could make public infrastructure longer-lasting and less expensive to maintain.

"Concrete by itself does not show any tensile properties, meaning if you have a piece of concrete and start pulling it apart, it can easily break. It's a very brittle material," Hojati said.

Concrete's tendency to fracture under stress is especially problematic when it comes to natural disasters and weather events like earthquakes and winds that put lateral stress, or tension, on buildings.

"The material should hold and resist both tension and compression. Concrete is a great material for compression, but when it comes to tension, it's a weak material," she said.