
since 2016

University of Minho . School of Architecture, Art and Design
23 . 24 May 2022
The workshop is an initiative of ACL (EAAD, UMinho) and ISM+D (TU Darmstadt) aiming to share knowledge and connect young researchers working on the future of additive manufacturing and building automation through presentations, workshops, and joint activities. The meeting features a discussion of individual research progress, guest lectures, deep-dive sessions on design for additive manufacturing and robotic control, and hands-on sessions on future collaborations such as joint work, R&D projects and proposals.
organising committee
Bruno Figueiredo (EAAD-UM, Lab2PT, ACL)
Paulo J. S. Cruz (EAAD-UM, Lab2PT, ACL)
Philipp Rosendahl (TU Darmstadt, ISM+D)
Ulrich Knaack (TU Darmstadt, ISM+D)

organisation
support

Invited lectures

Sandra Lucas
Assistant professor in 3D printing of concrete in the research group Concrete Structures at the TU/e department of the Built Environment (unit Structural Design).
lecture title
The journey to achieve sustainability and circularity in additive manufacturing of construction materials

Wilson R. Leal da Silva
Product Manager at the Danish Technological Institute. He works on topics such as 3D Concrete Printing, concrete inspection using drones and artificial intelligence, as well as software solutions applied to concrete technology.
lecture title
Locally-produced concrete in
3DCP applications
Extrusion-based 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) offers an attractive solution to solve several problems from the labour-intensive construction industry. The attractiveness of 3DCP is manifested in being able to save laborious work, reduce waste and construction time, and provide freedom of form. While these characteristics are drivers to speed up 3DCP adoption, the material cost used for that remains as one of the challenges towards a widespread application and transformation of the technology in the construction sector. Main-stream market products targeting materials for 3DCP are mostly not attractive from an economic and environmental standpoint, since they are usually costly pre-mixed systems with complex formulations and high cement content. In this presentation, I will walk through the technical aspects related to designing sustainable concrete mixes for 3DCP applications and point out the importance of blended binder system and concrete admixtures for active rheology and structural build up control. In addition, I will highlight the environmental benefits of upscaling the 3DCP feedstock from mortars to concrete with large aggregates.

David Correa
Assistant Professor at Waterloo University. His research looks at biological structures and processes as a source of insight for the development of new fabrication processes and advanced materials.
lecture title
Material Architectures: Bio-Materials, Bio-inspired Design, Adaptive and Self-forming systems
The lecture will address the role that bio-inspired design, architecture and technology have in the development of material architectures at multiple scales. The boundary between material and structure is challenged by the close interdependence between the processes of material organization, the definition of shape, and the integration of function. The opportunities and challenges that this approach has generated will be discussed through a series of academic and professional projects.

Erno Langenberg
Architect and the founder of Elstudio in Amsterdam. Lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) and researcher of the Digital Production Research Group and Robot Studio.
lecture title
Lines of code
and coded clay
How do we design for the additive manufacturing of clay, to be used for architectural applications? How does thinking from the digital production process (design and fabrication) change the way of designing and the perception of form? How do we bring together the necessary, inherently, multidisciplinary knowledge to work in the field of additive manufacturing of clay? In this talk I want to address some lessons learned and questions that have arisen during a period of formal experimentation with 3D printing clay as food for thought, to add to the discussion during this workshop.

Ingrid Paoletti
Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at the Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Department (ABC) at Politecnico di Milano. She is an experienced researcher on Material Systems Culture and Building Technology Innovation.
lecture title
Balance Design: digital tools and circular innovations for a new technological culture in Architecture

Roberto Naboni
Associate Professor in Computational Design and Digital Fabrication at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) where he leads CREATE, the group for Computational Research in Emergent Architectural Technology.
lecture title
Additive Concrete. Design and Manufacturing from Material to Structure

research presentations

João Ribeiro
PhD candidate EAAD
Concrete AM: An insight into the control of main parameters
Following applications in other industrial sectors, the integration of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies in the production of architectural components have revealed a great potential to respond to the need of customisation and optimisation that the evolution of digital processes in architectural design has highlighted. This study establishes the foundations for research on the application of cementitious-based materials according to Material Extrusion techniques. The empirical knowledge of the investigations arising from the work of the Advanced Ceramics Laboratory (ACL), as well as parallels to other exploratory projects in 3D Printing on Concrete, supports an insight on the main control parameters inherent to the technology, allowing through experimentation to list a set of perceived issues, particularly regarding the relationship between the material and the machine. In the absence of functional concrete extrusion equipment, the presentation also describes the development of a custom laboratory-scale extrusion system that was used in the experimental tests.

Mohamad Fouad
PhD candidate EAAD
Additive manufacturing of Earth Based Composites: Towards experimenting material behavior to print complex cantilevers
This research aims to improve earth-based materials mix-design to print complex cantilevers. Simultaneously, introducing new techniques digitally and physically to enhance the process of printing self-supported cantilever surfaces. In this study, we assess the possibility of adapting this technique to earth-based material. After making the earth's rheological behavior suitable for 3D printing, a laboratory-scale printing has been carried out and the printed samples have been mechanically tested with simulating the tensile strength.

Dunia Abdullah Agha
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
3D paper printing
The research investigated the optimization of the mixture formulation to reach a printable paste by the rheology characterization and printing process parameters and then evaluate the printing performance, then controlling the shrinkage and deformation after printing for 3D paper printing to achieve the quality control and structural integration, and studying the mechanical and acoustical properties for 3D paper printed objects.

Tatiana Campos
PhD candidate EAAD
Biomaterials for construction and technology: A way of thinking about sustainable architecture
Given the possibility of using living materials and integrating them into architecture and digital fabrication, a set of mixtures is proposed. Chitin is the second most abundant biopolymer in the world after cellulose and is found in the shells of crustaceans, on the walls of fungi and molluscs, and also in some algae. This biopolymer can lead to versatile and biodegradable bioplastics by converting seafood residues. Moreover, the possibility of combining it with cellulose – the most abundant material in nature – holds great potential for the development of mixtures that can be used to produce components for contemporary architecture. This presentation focuses on the manipulation of mixtures based on biomaterials that can be easily considered substitutes for other materials found in our daily lives.

James Clarke-Hicks & Isabel Ochoa
University of Waterloo
Grading Light: Utilizing plastic deformation to functionally grade ceramic light screens
When interacting with light, surface geometries and clay bodies can work together to heighten the perception of depth and alter illumination. This research, developed by Isabel Ochoa and James Clarke-Hicks, investigates how 3D clay printing can generate materially responsive engagements between ceramics and light. A computational methodology is developed to produce texture and sculptural relief in ceramic surfaces. Liquid Deposition Modelling is used to study the plastic deformation of clay during wet-processing. Most 3D printing technologies are currently conceived as end-stage production processes characterized by high-fidelity between digital models and physical outputs. Stoneware and porcelain have a wide variety of working properties and ceramic traits that demand new approaches to digital tooling. By making the study of material behaviour essential to the design process, clay 3D printing enables non-linear design-to-production systems. The research outputs are a series of stoneware and porcelain screens that vary in brightness and illumination based on how light may be obstructed, reflected or transmitted across their surfaces. Prototypes are developed at full scale to understand the relationship between sensory engagement and material properties.

Christin Gandyra
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
Parametric Design and
Evaluation of AM Brickwork
Traditionally, bricks are produced with an extrusion press which makes the process highly economical but limits the freedom of design, only allowing for continuously vertically perforated hollow bricks. In this regard robo-casting offers new possibilities for the implementation of more complex designs to the brick industry. The study focuses on developing new geometries with closed cavities for bricks, taking the restrictions and perspectives of additive manufacturing into account. In addition to exploring the new design possibilities, physical and mechanical properties of the structurally different additively manufactured bricks were also taken into account. The research aimed on thermally optimizing the bricks while still achieving the necessary compressive strength and demonstrate its feasibility. Three different designs were developed, manufactured and tested compared with a reference geometry in terms of their compressive strength and thermal conductivity in order to be able to draw conclusions about the prospects that robo-casting offers the brick industry.

Amir Chhadeh
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
3D printed structural
glass components
The research investigates the material properties of additively manufactured components made of glass. Particular attention is paid to the substance-to-substance bond with a float glass plate. A successful application of material to the plate would allow the generation of new connections and constructions for facades. A pure connection via glass has many advantages – in particular compared to adhesive or bolted connections. For additively manufactured glass, material properties such as strength and maximum load-bearing capacity are derived on the basis of experiments. We propose experimental setups with maximum simplicity that allow for the isolation and derivation of individual properties – for example a modified bending test to determine the maximum tensile strength. Investigated points of interest are the connection points between the float glass plate and the applied glass, as well as the connections between layers themselves. Preliminary investigations by finite element methods indicate that the contact angle between the deposited material and the float glass pane has a major influence on the maximum stresses. The contact angle can be influenced by different temperature settings during the printing process. This also applies to the connection between the respective layers.

Alexander Wolf
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
Support-strategies for
robocasting in Ceramic AM
for building construction
When fabricating complex geometries via additive manufacturing, the use of support-material often becomes a crucial necessity. Especially in extrusion-based 3D-printing, a temporary structure is often needed to enable overhanging or bridging areas of the print, which are required to realise undercuts or cavities. Also, support-structures are often used to prevent or limit distortions of the workpiece, that might occur during curing or post-processing. Robocasting as the technique of distributing clay-based raw materials for ceramic AM is such an extrusion-based technology. Due to its capability of printing quite large structures, RC yet is the most promising candidate to introduce Ceramic AM in the building industry. This paper aims to point out opportunities, as well as challenges in the use of support-material for RC. To achieve this, typical restrictions regarding geometry and printing parameters shall be identified. Following, strategies shall be developed to place support-structures, which enable an efficient production, as well as favourable material- and surface-properties.

João Carvalho
PhD candidate EAAD
Ceramic AM
functional structures
The manufacture of architectural components driven by digital design tools and Additive Manufacturing allows the achievement of highly evolved constructive systems, more integrated into a specific reality to which it is intended to respond, resulting in unique and adapted solutions with high geometric and material performances. This work foresees the development of a constructive system that incorporates reversible and irreversible connections, being formalised in a set of gantry structures with load-bearing capacity, composed by hybrid (ceramic in collaboration with other materials) beams and columns, giving the comparative model between digital design and manufacture methods and the traditional ones.

Kerstin Thiele
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
Additive Manufacturing of glass: Characterization of thermal and residual stresses
In order to meet the demand of transparent facades, novel glass-glass connections are being developed using fused glass deposition modelling. For this purpose, molten glass is applied to a base plate made of glass. The aim is to apply additive manufacturing of glass onto Soda Lime Glass, which is standard in architectural applications. In this work, the focus is on the thermal stresses that are present during the printing process and the residual stresses that may remain in the glass product after cooling. In order to understand the individual steps of additive manufacturing of glass on a base plate, this process is divided into five steps, which will be examined individually. For each step, the temperatures during printing and cooling are recorded with the help of a thermographic camera and thermocouples. With the help of numerical simulations and photoelastic methods, the thermal and residual stresses can be examined. Here, the test setup, material properties of glass as well as first results of the investigation of heating and cooling of a base plate using a gas torch are shown.

Marvin Kehl
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
Building shelters with
solar-sintering
Hard-to-reach areas on Earth or other celestial bodies are often of high scientific interest. The safety of people on site however, is sometimes difficult to guarantee. Providing habitats to protect against extreme weather events, radiation, etc. can be very expensive and can even get impossible due to the transportation of essential resources. Furthermore, the research team is unprotected during the assembly, which is an additional safety risk. To reduce the risk of the team and transportation costs of necessary resources, the habitat should be build by autonomous, solar-powered robots using only in-situ material (ice, sand, regolith,...). Therefore, the robots should use an additive manufacturing technique called “solar sintering” to connect the material in layers by melting it with concentrated solar power. The advantage of this approach is the limitation of the transportation costs to the weight of the robots. Also they can be transported to the target area and start printing way before the research team arrives.

Maren Erven
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
Design of WAAM-Steel Nodes
for reliable construction
Additive manufacturing provides new design possibilities for steel construction. Material can be used much more efficiently and placed only where it is needed. Production and assembly can be facilitated. In particular, there is great potential in this respect in fabricating structures that link several components together, referred to here as steel nodes. But what effects does the manufacturing process have on the load-bearing capacity of the manufactured component and how can its safety be assessed? The presentation deals with different aspects of the WAAM process and the material properties associated with it and makes suggestions for the design of additively manufactured steel nodes.

Benedikt Waldschmitt
PhD candidate TU Darmstadt
3D printing of column structures for architectural applications
Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is a welding process used to build up three-dimensional structures in steel. Like other Additive Manufacturing technologies, it allows for geometrically-complex structures to be fabricated which are otherwise unfeasible to manufacture using traditional methods. The presentation presents an integrated design approach to the use of WAAM in the context of large-scaled applications, focusing on column variants of gradually-increasing geometric complexity as basis for architectural constructions. It combines material behavior and process parameter research together with a rudimentary digital twin model, with the aim of providing a digital tool to design architectural structures for WAAM. To achieve the desired geometries, necessary welding parameters are stored and applied to the digital twin model. This is complimented by multiple process-control checks, which are implemented during the printing process to ensure that an object is generated as planned. Finally, the structures are manufactured and are subjected to a critical evaluation in order to identify the possible future potential. The challenge of combining geometric complexity with manufacturing for large scale represents a next step in the integration of WAAM in steel constructions for architectural applications.

António Morais & João Silva
Fellows Lab2PT . EAAD
Strategies of Learning and
control of robotic manufacturing methods in architecture
Over the last decade, robotics applied to the construction and architecture sector has evolved through the support of new programming methods, being more inclusive and accessible to non-specialists in the field of computation and robotics such as the generality of architects and students of architecture. Among others, Kuka Prc, Furobot and Compass Fab, are add-ons of Grasshopper (an API of Rhinoceros modelling software) developed with the aim of controlling robotic arms through visual programming methods, which for professionals without scripting knowledge, is an opportunity to program industrial robots effectively, taking advantage of their multiple capabilities. One of the main obstacles to the use of these technologies by non-experts is the access to practical application during the learning phase in the use of robotic manufacturing control tools. Due to the high cost of the equipment, the access to industrial robots in teaching and research contexts is still limited, namely for initial learning phases, or for the development of hacking strategies. In this respect, the present work tries to answer this problem through the creation of an inexpensive mini robot based on Arduino's TinkerKit Braccio robot whose hardware was altered to be compatible with the control from Grasshopper Add-ons. In this case, the add-on chosen was the Kuka Prc for the sake of compatibility with the Kuka robots to be installed in the new EAAD robotics laboratory in the next few months. With the use of this mini robotic arm, a robotic arm simulator is created from which it becomes possible to have physical feedback of the virtual simulation that is being generated in the computational model. To demonstrate how this workflow between computational design model, mini robot, real robot works, a structure composed of several pieces was designed with the objective of being manufactured using robotic manufacturing methods. The structure design process was automated in such a way that the structure is parametrically divided into sections compatible with the robot's working area, and subsequently folded into it. In a first step, the commands are implemented, and the manufacturing process is simulated in the digital environment. The data from this simulation is then sent to the mini robotic arm that will carry out the programmed operation. Thus, it becomes possible to better understand the specifics of operation, limitations, and control techniques, namely regarding the geometric control of the positioning of the tools and the control of arm displacements. At the same time, it allows the construction of scale prototypes, which allow both the testing of the architectural design and the robotic program generated, which will later be uploaded to the full-scale robot.

deep dive sessions

Cellulose materials hands on
Dunia Abdullah Agha & Tatiana Campos
The deep dive session ‘Cellulose materials Hands on’ aims to demonstrate a set of cellulose-based mixtures and their potential when applied to the production of objects using additive manufacturing. It focuses essentially on the differentiation of behaviour between two natural mixtures production processes and the differentiation of their behaviour.

Robotic fabrication tools
Alexander Wolf, António Morais & João Silva
The robotics deep session will focus on the unconventional use of robotic systems, controlled from software accessible to non-specialists in the field. The session will revolve around the creation of a collective piece developed by the participants. Through the use of a tablet, ink, tiles and a brush, this piece will be the motto for a demonstration of some of the capabilities of the smallest robot of Arena: the Kuka Kr10 1440. With the collaborative design as a starting point, an image is processed and translated into data which can be inscribed into a mural, so that a record of the session can be perpetuated. To paint the tiles, the robot will be equipped with a customized tool that can allow for various painting techniques, focusing for this task on Pointillism, popularized by artists such as Georges Lemmen or Van Gogh. The deep session intends to demonstrate that the application potential of robots are not limited to the traditional tasks of industrial production, and even less is it necessary to stick to the tools provided by those.

schedule
1st day . May 23
Research Session . Material advances for AM&CA
08.30 . 08.45 Reception and coffee
08.45 . 09.00 Opening . Paulo J. S. Cruz & Ulrich Knaack
09.15 . 09.45 Invited Lecture 1 . Sandra Lucas
09.45 . 10.15 Presentation 1 . João Ribeiro
10.15 . 10.45 Presentation 2 . Mohamad Fouad
10.45 . 11.15 Coffee break
11.15 . 11.45 Invited Lecture 2 . Wilson R. Leal da Silva
11.45 . 12.15 Presentation 3 . Dunia Abdullah Agha
12.15 . 12.45 Presentation 4 . Tatiana Campos
12.45 . 14.15 Lunch break
14.15 . 14.45 Invited Lecture 3 . David Correa
14.45 . 15.15 Presentation 5 . James Clarke-Hicks and Isabel Ochoa
15.15 . 15.45 Presentation 6 . Christin Gandyra
15.45 . 16.15 Coffee Break
16.15 . 16.45 Presentation 7 . Alexander Wolf
16.45 . 17.45 Deep dive Session . Cellulose materials hands on
19.00 . 21.00 Dinner
2nd day . May 24
Research Session . Design for AM&CA
08.30 . 09.00 Reception and coffee
09.00 . 09.30 Invited Lecture 4 . Erno Langenberg
09.30 . 10.00 Presentation 8 . João Carvalho
10.00 . 10.30 Presentation 9 . Marvin Kehl
10.30 . 11.00 Coffee Break
11.00 . 11.30 Invited Lecture 5 . Ingrid Paoletti
11.30 . 12.00 Presentation 10 . Kerstin Thiele
12.00 . 12.30 Presentation 11 . Amir Chhadeh
12.30 . 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 . 14.30 Invited Lecture 6 . Roberto Naboni
14.30 . 15.00 Presentation 12 . Maren Erven
15.00 . 15.30 Presentation 13 . Benedikt Waldschmitt
15.30 . 16.00 Coffee Break
16.00 . 16.30 Presentation 14 . António Morais & João Silva
16.30 . 17.30 Deep dive Session . Robotic fabrication tools
17.30 . 18.00 Coffee Break
18.00 . 19.00 Session on future collaborations
20.00 . open Informal dinner and pub night