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TOWARDS INFORMED DESIGN DECISION SUPPORT OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING IN CONSTRUCTION - THE USE OF INTEGRATED KNOWLEDGE IN BIM-BASED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
... To this end, Li and Frank proposed two key approaches for the DDSS as AM knowledge formalization and interactive decision-making support, which are enabled by semantic web technology and multi-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) methods, respectively [41]. In the work of [42], they demonstrated a framework for logic-based inference and feedback between this DDSS and a BIM authoring tool. This paper alternatively uses the terms "AM" and "AMC": AM methods subsume the AMC methods and are used in a neutral sense, while AMC methods are specific to these in the TRR277 project. ...
... In theory, SWRL extends the expressivity of OWL2 DL [75]; in practice, rules are made to bind manufacturing and planning constraints to design intent such that inferences can be made regarding manufacturability, material conformity, logistics, etc. As Li and Petzold have already addressed this rule-making problem [42,64], this work will not go into detail again. ...
... As proof of concept, we followed the technical framework raised by [42] and implemented a prototype of knowledge-driven DDSS. As shown in Figure 11, the AMC ontology is made available for the BIM authoring tool (Revit) via a plugin (BIM toolkit), while the inference service is provided by another standard-alone software (DDSS portal). ...
The construction industry has long been labor-intensive, with slow productivity growth and a significant environmental impact. In this regard, the ever-increasing practices of additive manufacturing (AM) in construction have presented a variety of advantages and are deemed one of the critical technologies for the concept of Construction 4.0. Building information modeling (BIM) as an enabler for the digital transformation in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain provides a framework for considering novel AM methods during the early stages of architectural design. It is known that decisions during early design stages significantly impact the subsequent planning and construction phases, whereas missing AM knowledge by architects and engineers could in turn impede the adoption of AM technologies when the early determination of appropriate manufacturing methods needs to be made. Meanwhile, the early stages of architectural design are characterized by vagueness, uncertainty, and incompleteness, which have to be clarified iteratively by both architects and domain experts. To this end, this paper introduces a knowledge-driven design decision support prospectively coupled with a feedback mechanism under the BIM methodology. As such, architects can be assisted in choosing appropriate construction methods during the early stages of architectural design.
... For example, components to be printed need to be small enough to fit into the workspace of the AM system. Li and Petzold [54] aim to support designers already in the early design phase to integrate AM design requirements by developing a Design Decision Support System (DDSS) for BIM. Generally, when designing components for AM, greater care must be taken to ensure model quality. ...
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a disruptive technology with the potential to revolutionize the construction industry by integrating digital design with automated manufacturing. This paper presents and extends Fabrication Information Modeling (FIM), a comprehensive framework tailored for automated manufacturing in construction. FIM facilitates the seamless integration of digital design concepts with automated manufacturing processes, enabling precise control over fabrication information and enhancing construction efficiency and quality. This paper demonstrates its potential to optimize construction processes through a detailed exploration of FIM's capabilities, including data preparation, path planning, simulation integration, robot control, and data feedback. By enabling a circular data flow between digital modeling and manufacturing, FIM is able to bridge the gap between digital design and physical construction, revolutionizing how construction projects are conceived, planned, and executed. The paper concludes by highlighting the challenges and future research directions in advancing FIM-based construction systems, emphasizing its transformative potential in driving innovation and sustainability in the construction industry.
Digital manufacturing methods have been successfully used in different industries for years and have since had a positive effect on the development of their productivity. These methods offer significantly greater design freedom and make it possible to develop shape-optimized and function-activated components. In the construction industry, however, these technologies are only being used reluctantly, even though additive methods could make resource-efficient construction possible. The possibly decisive disadvantage of these methods is that a significantly higher granularity of product and process information is required, thus significantly increasing the planning effort. A circumstance that the framework described in this study, fabrication information modeling (FIM), could significantly mitigate by linking digital fabrication and BIM-based digital building design via a digital chain. For this purpose, FIM provides a methodology with which the information of a digital building model can be detailed, component by component, in a fabrication-aware manner. Based on the open exchange data format IFC, the FIM framework integrates seamlessly into the BIM context and enables automated detailing of the design information.
The current digital fabrication workflow requires many iterations between design and manufacturing. Automated manufacturability analysis can reduce the number of iterations at the design stage. However, existing approaches that leverage design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA) do not consider detailed product features and production capabilities. To address this limitation, this paper utilizes an ontology-based approach to connect design and manufacturing knowledge. The developed manufacturability analysis system (MAS) involves semantic reasoning to analyze manufacturability by combining feature-based modelling, production capability modelling and manufacturing rules. The system was tested on a timber panelized project to demonstrate complex manufacturability analysis capability. The testing proves that the system could provide real-time feedback to the designers, leading to fewer design iterations. Thus, the paper is a first step towards automated fabrication-aware design and the results from the study lay the foundation for future research on connecting knowledge for interdisciplinary rule checking
Recently, there has been an increasing interest on the sustainability advantage of 3D concrete printing (3DCP), where the original cement-based mixtures used for printing could be replaced or incorporated with environmental-friendly materials. The development in digital modeling and design tools also creates a new realm of form-finding architecture for 3DCP, which is based on topological optimization of volumetric mass and physical performance. This review provides a perspective of using different green cementitious materials, applications of structural optimization, and modularization methods for realizing sustainable construction with additive manufacturing. The fresh and hardened mechanical properties of various sustainable materials for extrusion-based 3D printing are presented, followed by discussions on different topology optimization techniques. The current state of global research and industrial applications in 3DCP, along with the development of sustainable construction materials, is also summarized. Finally, research and practical gaps identified in this review lead to several recommendations on material developments, digital design tool's prospects for 3DCP to achieve the sustainability goal.
Digital Fabrication with Concrete (DFC) encompasses 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) and many other methods of production. DFC is emerging from an era of invention and demonstration to one where the merits of one principle over another needs to be quantified systematically. DFC technologies vary in characteristics, complexity and maturity which hampers the synthesis of research and comparisons of performance. The interdependence of design geometry, material properties and process characteristics is well recognised. Materials research has made significant progress in recent years and there have been many applications with varying design geometries demonstrated. Far less has been done to guide the definition and description of the processes used. This work takes a step forward by presenting classification and process description guidance for DFC. The approach was developed by engaging a broad cross-section of the international community through the activities of the RILEM Technical Committee 276 between 2016 and 2020.
The application of additive manufacturing (AM) in construction has been increasingly studied in recent years. Large robotic arm- and gantry-systems have been created to print building parts using aggregate-based materials, metals, or polymers. Significant benefits of AM are the automation of the production process, a high degree of design freedom, and the resulting potential for optimization. However, the building components and 3D-printing processes need to be modeled appropriately. In this paper, the current state of AM in construction is reviewed. AM processes and systems as well as their application in research and construction projects are presented. Moreover, digital methods for planning 3D-printed building parts and AM processes are described.
Knowledge Bases (KBs) enable engineers to capture knowledge in a formalized way. This formalization allows us to combine knowledge, thus creating the basis for smart factories while also supporting product and production system design. Building comprehensive and reusable KBs is still a challenge, though, especially for knowledge-intensive domains like engineering and production. To cope with the sheer amount of knowledge, engineers should reuse existing KBs. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of domain-specific KBs for production and engineering, as well as generic top-level ontologies. The application of such top-level ontologies offers new insights by integrating knowledge from various domains, stakeholders, and companies. To bridge the gap between top-level ontologies and existing domain KBs, we introduce an Intermediate Engineering Ontology (IEO).
Ontologies are emerging as best representation techniques for knowledge based context domains. The continuing need for interoperation, collaboration and effective information retrieval has lead to the creation of semantic web with the help of tools and reasoners which manages personalized information. The future of semantic web lies in an ontology which describes relationship between terms, and will serve as a foundation for establishing a shared understanding between applications. In this paper, we surveyed and compared numerous reasoning models, ontology tools and express well defined Web services for user with different annotations. We compared latest and traditional reasoners like Pellet, RACER, HermiT, FaCT++ with respect to their features supported by them. Similarly, different variety of ontology development, querying and designing tools like Protégé, Jena, SWOOP, Oiled, Apollo, etc. have been compared to predict the inference support through utilizing several features backed up by them. Finally, this paper presents visualized comparison among all reasoners, tools with the aid of their supporting features or characteristics and classified them as strong, average or weak. In addition, we have also classified the reasoner on the basis of their response time and it was observed that Pellet has lowest response time whereas Racer has highest response time.
Design is a complex process that depends very much on the information about the design task to perform. At the early design stages, usually only conceptual sketches and schematics are available, often rough and incomplete. Still at the early stages of design the most important decisions have to be taken. This leads to an information contradiction: almost no information s available and yet most of the decisions have to be taken. Integral design is meant to overcome this problem of lacking information at the start of the design process by providing methods to communicate the consequences of design steps across the different disciplines involved in the design process. The Integral Design Methodology, based on the Methodical Design approach, is meant to support all disciplines in the design process with information about the tasks and the decisions of the other design disciplines involved in the design process. Supplying and exchanging explanations about the decisions taken during the design process will improve understanding of the combined efforts by all the designer parties. In particular the use of the morphological overviews combined with the Kesselring method as a decision support tool will help to structure the early conceptual steps within the design process and make decisions taken during the design process more transparent for all the people involved. This method is used in
In situ Additive Manufacturing (AM) has developed into an active research and industry-transfer area, mainly due to the increasing need for productive and sustainable methods in the concrete construction industry in combination with novel technological enablers. While current systems for in situ AM are often single large-scale stationary facilities, Mobile Additive Manufacturing (MAM) systems are an emerging technology that could provide scalability for AM processes on construction sites. This scalability is achievable through cooperability of multiple mobile robots on individual 3D printing tasks, while their mobility and autonomy enable deployment in both new and existing contexts, and coordination of operations for the direct and indirect interaction with humans. To ensure applicability and scalability, MAM closely integrates architectural, mechanical, and materials design, the manufacturing process, sensing, and control. With this paper, we give a comprehensive review of research trends, open questions and key performance indicators. We support the discussion with potential architectural application scenarios. Overall, we aim to indicate why addressing MAM is an inherently multidisciplinary challenge.
We focus in this paper on the embodied and operational contribution to climate change of a concrete-printing robotic cell. We first propose, in the case of extrusion-based additive manufacturing, a simple functional unit that relates a volume-based material impact and a time-based process impact through the printing head velocity and the filament cross section. We then compute, for two robotic arms/bi-component case studies, the embodied impact related to the production of the printing cells themselves and measure their hourly electrical power consumptions. Our results and analysis suggest that the relative contribution to climate change of the printing process alone depends mostly on its spatial resolution. This suggests finally the existence of an optimal printing resolution that may allow for the highest material saving while minimizing the process-related climate change impact.
3d printing of cementitious material is a relatively new additive manufacturing process whose growing interest and fast development is mainly due to the digitalised manufacturing, allowing the disposition of material where it pleases. Yet, due to the properties of the fresh material and the difficulty to generate paths for the robots, the printed geometries have remained simple. In this regard, this papers longs to broaden the range of printable shapes by proposing a process-aware exploration of the 3d printing design space.
This is done by looking at historic strategies that have been developed to build cantilevers, vaults and domes in masonry - a more ancient additive manufacturing process. Similarities and main differences between the two processes are pointed out, at the scale of the component, the layer and the global structure. From that a classification of masonry strategies to build cantilevers is proposed, facilitating the identification of parameters for 3d printing that will allow to reproduce such structures. Later, some guidelines for the design of printable geometries and the generation of robotic toolpaths are given, in the light of previous findings.
This article provides an overview of different particle-bed 3D printing techniques for the production of concrete elements. A classification is proposed which considers the direct production of concrete components, the production of formwork as well as composite components by means of a permanent formwork. Three techniques are considered as relevant for concrete construction, i.e. selective binder activation, selective paste intrusion and binder jetting. Design as well as material aspects are addressed. The underlying physics of fluid infiltration into the particle-bed and its effect on the properties of the hardened material are discussed on the basis of recent research results. Finally, the first applications of particle-bed 3D printing are presented which demonstrate the potential of this technique in concrete construction.
Design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) gives designers new freedoms to create complex geometries and combine parts into one. However, it has its own limitations, and more importantly, requires a shift in thinking from traditional design for subtractive manufacturing. There is a lack of formal and structured guidelines, especially for novice designers. To formalize knowledge of DFAM, we have developed an ontology using formal web ontology language (OWL)/resource description framework (RDF) representations in the Protéegée tool. The description logic formalism facilitates expressing domain knowledge as well as capturing information from benchmark studies. This is demonstrated in a case study with three design features: revolute joint, threaded assembly (screw connection), and slider-crank. How multiple instances (build events) are stored and retrieved in the knowledge base is discussed in light of modeling requirements for the DFAM knowledge base: knowledge capture and reuse, supporting a tutoring system, integration into CAD tools. A set of competency questions are described to evaluate knowledge retrieval. Examples are given with SPARQL queries. Reasoning with semantic web rule language (SWRL) is exemplified for manufacturability analysis. Knowledge documentation is the main objective of the current ontology. However, description logic creates multiple opportunities for future work, including representing and reasoning about DFAM rules in a structured modular hierarchy, discovering new rules with induction, and recognizing patterns with classification, e.g., what leads to "successful" versus "unsuccessful" fabrications.
A paper published in 1983 established that the rotating
calipers paradigm provides an elegant, simple, and yet
powerful computational tool for solving several twodimensional
geometric problems. Since then the
rotating calipers have been extended to three
dimensions, and have been applied to many new
problems. In the present paper the history of this tool is
reviewed, and stock is taken of the rich variety of
computational problems and applications that have
been tackled with it during the past thirty years.
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