Modelling of meta-concrete structures manufactured by 3D printing

Meta-concrete structures with multifunctional features and superior performance characteristics are promising candidates for a broad range of prefabricated engineering applications. This PhD thesis presents a novel approach to designing and manufacturing meta-structures that are made of concrete or cement material. These structures are built on bioinspiration concepts that are naturally inspired by continuous non-self-intersecting surfaces. In this bioinspired approach, a triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structure is employed. The bioinspired cellular concrete/cement structures are first fabricated using three-dimensional (3D) printing formwork, which is one of the 3D concrete-printing (3DCP) techniques, to evaluate its mechanical performance in comparison with other concrete/cement structures (i.e. lattice, fractal-like structures). Numerical and experimental results indicate that the mechanical responses of the TPMS cellular structures yield a higher compressive strength than their counterparts. Then, a novel computational framework in 3DCP is proposed to model the printing process of such TPMS structures before carrying out the actual printing. The framework can predict various failure modes of the printed objects and its outcomes agree well with the experimental results. Furthermore, parametric and sensitivity analyses are conducted to reveal the effects of printing speed on buildability and its vertical deformation in the concrete-printing process through the proposed computational framework.