Prospects of additive technologies in construction: expectations and reality

摘要

Introduction. Additive technologies in construction are currently considered to be technologies for emerging future markets, i. e. technological solutions that have not yet been formed but are potentially capable of providing a significant volume of consumption in the future. The aim of this paper is to analyse the 20-year period of science and practice development in the field of additive technologies in construction, to identify the main achievements and unresolved problems, and to outline the prospects for development. The potential of additive technologies in construction is associated with the possibility of creating bionic design of construction objects, which implies a combination of freeform and organised internal space of object structures, in which the mass of material is located only along the lines of load. This can lead to a radical reduction of material mass in the volume of the structure and change the principles of design and construction. The practice of application of construction additive technologies in modern construction. On the basis of the analysis of typical implemented projects it is shown that its introduction so far is limited to low-rise housing construction, creation of objects of functional-decorative and special purpose. At present, the robotic process of 3D printing is used only for the construction of the shell of vertical structures of building objects; other structures of these objects are made by the traditional technology of concrete casting, which determines their high cost. Unresolved problems and factors hindering the introduction of construction additive technologies consist in the lack of design methods, regulatory framework, effective universal technological complexes, sufficient nomenclature of mixtures for printing. Approaches to solving these problems are presented. Development prospects. The rational directions of introduction of building additive technologies at the present technological level are: construction of small building objects, especially in territories with severe climatic conditions, where there is no developed base of building industry; introduction of building additive technologies in industrial house-building for finishing of building facades and printing of elements of decorative infrastructure of residential complexes.