Digital Concrete Production With Vertical Textile Reinforcement

Abstract

One major challenge preventing widespread introduction of digital concrete production is the integration of reinforcing materials. Textile grid structures offer a possible solution for this challenge. Textile reinforced concrete (TRC) has been researched for approximately 20 years and is currently being commercialized, initially in pre-cast elements for facades and bridges. TRC enables the construction of thin-walled, strong structures with a high freedom of design, properties well suited for the integration in digital concrete production. First trials for this integration have been performed and published. However, these studies only use short fibres mixed into the concrete matrix or textile reinforcement within the printing plane, which limits the transferred loads. This study shows the results of preliminary tests of vertical, out-of-plane textile reinforcements for digital concrete production. The textile reinforcement is fixed vertically and the concrete printing process is performed diagonally, “through” the textile. The results of four-point bending tests are presented.