BIM-Based Concrete Printing

Extrusion-based additive manufacturing (AM), or three-dimensional (3D) printing, has matured into a set of advanced methods to automate the construction of large-scale concrete structures, while minimizing cost and material waste. However, current AM data models are inadequate for 3D concrete printing due to insufficient incorporation of information on the relationships between process, material, and geometry, which may cause redundancy, information loss, and inconsistencies. Aiming at improving AM data modeling for concrete printing, this paper proposes a metamodeling approach for AM of concrete structures, referred to as “printing information modeling”, which takes advantage of building information modeling (BIM). As will be shown in this paper, the BIM-based printing information model, serving as a metamodel, incorporates the digital data triplet of process, material, and geometry parameters to generate computer numerical control (CNC) commands that may readily be used for concrete printing. A validation test is performed, which instantiates the printing information model, using a BIM model, for generating CNC commands, enabling optimal digital data exchange from BIM models to concrete printers. As a result of this study, it is demonstrated that printing information modeling adequately defines the information required for AM of concrete structures using a BIM-based approach, showing promising potential to improve current AM data modeling efforts.