Digitally fabricated ribbed concrete floor slabs: a sustainable solution for construction

RILEM Technical Letters

article

Jaime Mata-Falcón¹  Patrick Bischof¹  Tobias Huber¹  Ana Anton²  Joris Burger³  Francesco Ranaudo⁴  Andrei Jipa²  Lukas Gebhard¹  Lex Reiter⁵  Ena Lloret-Fritschi⁵  Tom Van Mele⁴  Philippe Block⁴  Fabio Gramazio³  Matthias Kohler³  Benjamin Dillenburger²  Timothy Wangler⁵  Walter Kaufmann¹ 

[1]Institute of Structural Engineering

[2]Institute of Technology in Architecture

[3]Institute of Technology in Architecture, Gramazio Kohler Research

[4]Institute of Technology in Architecture, Block Research Group

[5]Institute for Building Materials

[6]Academy of Architecture, Università della Svizzera Italiana

关键词: Digital Fabrication;    Concrete Structures;    Digital Concrete;    Floor Slabs;    Ribbed Slabs;    Optimisation;    Sustainability;   

DOI  :  10.21809/rilemtechlett.2022.161

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: RILEM Publications SARL

【 摘 要 】

The concrete used in floor slabs accounts for large greenhouse gas emissions in building construction. Solid slabs, often used today, consume much more concrete than ribbed slabs built by pioneer structural engineers like Hennebique, Arcangeli and Nervi. The first part of this paper analyses the evolution of slab systems over the last century and their carbon footprint, highlighting that ribbed slabs have been abandoned mainly for the sake of construction time and cost efficiency. However, highly material-efficient two-way ribbed slabs are essential to reduce the environmental impact of construction. Hence, the second part of this paper discusses how digital fabrication can help to tackle this challenge and presents four concrete floor systems built with digitally fabricated formwork. The digital fabrication technologies employed to produce these slab systems are digital cutting, binder-jetting, polymer extrusion and 3D concrete printing. The presented applications showcase a reduction in concrete use of approximately 50% compared to solid slabs. However, the digitally fabricated complex formworks produced were wasteful and/or labour-intensive. Further developments are required to make the digital processes sustainable and competitive by streamlining the production, using low carbon concrete mixes as well as reusing and recycling the formwork or structurally activating stay-in-place formwork.

【 授权许可】

CC BY