2016

The 3DP Slab is a 2 m² demonstrator that investigates the use of additive manufacturing to produce large‐scale building components with optimised material distribution. We designed the building element through a two‐dimensional evolutionary optimisation algorithm aiming to reduce material to a 0.25 set fraction of the bounding box, while minimising deformations under a uniformly distributed load. Boundary conditions were set to three fixed supports. The resulting geometry was 3D printed using sand binder-jetting and infiltrated with a stabilising resin.

The slab was computationally designed and produced by a multidisciplinary team from PCBM and DBT, two professorships at ETH Zürich with expertise in materials science and digital fabrication.

Credits:

DBT Team

Andrei Jipa, Mathias Bernhard, Dr. Mania Aghaei Meibodi, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Dillenburger

Assistance

Hyunchul Kwon, Victoria Fard, Nicholas Hoban, Michael Thoma, Philippe Steiner, Andreas Reusser

Partners

Christenguss AG, NCCR Digital Fabrication, 

Photography

Andrei Jipa, Hyunchul Kwon, Mathias Bernhard, Philippe Steiner

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (NCCR Digital Fabrication Agreement #51NF40‐141853)