Building additive manufacturing - a materials evaluation

The UK is currently in the grip of a housing crisis, a recent report from the House of Lords stated that the shortage of affordable housing in Britain could jeopardise our standards of living for future generations. This paper aims to attempts to influence the problem of housing shortage by evaluating the potential of implementing fast building additive manufacturing (BAM) as a construction process. To validate the feasibility of BAM as a building process a variety of compressive and slump tests were conducted to assess the capabilities of concrete paste as a layer-by-layer build material. A structure was fabricated to represent a fused filament fabrication (FFF)-based BAM process; the tests determined that nozzle design limitation, the flowability of concrete and resistance to slump are key material characteristics in constructing house structural elements. Furthermore, the use of recyclable natural and steel wool fibres did not contribute to mixtures compressive strength but did significantly increase its flexural strength