The Influence of Three-Dimensionally Printed Polymer Materials as Trusses and Shell Structures on the Mechanical Properties and Load-Bearing Capacity of Reinforced Concrete

Three-dimensional printing technology (3D printing) is becoming a more and more popular technology for aerospace, biology, medicine, mechanics, civil and other engineering fields. In civil engineering, researchers and engineers attempt to print construction materials such as concrete using 3D-printing technology. This study aims to investigate the reinforcement of concrete beams with 3D printing. To achieve this, fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology as a printing method and polylactic acid (PLA) as a material were selected. Two types of geometries were chosen to find the optimal mechanical behavior of concrete: high-performance concrete (HPC) reinforced with four types of trusses (Pratt, Howe, Warren, and Warren with vertical) and ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) reinforced with a hyperboloid shell structure. The compressive and tensile strengths of reinforced UHPC were examined by a three-point bending test, and reinforced HPC was examined by a four-point bending test. The results of the experiments show that hyperboloid shell structures can absorb energy, although the strength of reinforced UHPC is reduced. For example, there was a decrease of over 20% in the compressive strength and 41% in the flexural strength, but the ductility was raised. Adding the hyperboloid shell structure improved the deformability of the UHPC. When Warren and Howe trusses were added to the HPC as reinforcements, the flexural strength improved by over 26% and 4.3%, respectively. The overall results of this study show that the concrete reinforced with 3D-printed trusses was better than that with a hyperboloid shell structure.