A project named, 3D concrete Printing, won the first place award in the LRA Program (Lebanese Industrial Research Achievements) in the field of Civil Engineering and another award of Most Distinguished Supervisor as well. The awards were delivered by the minister of industry. The LIRA 13 ceremony took place at Dbayeh Convention Center on 16 December 2017.
Under the governance of the Ministry of Industry, the Association of Lebanese Industrials, the National Council for Scientific Research and Bank du Liban organize and an annual Conference and Exhibition for Lira Achievements (Lira Forum).
The 3D Concrete Printing Machine was sponsored by Dar Al HANDASAH and LIRA Program under the supervision of Prof. Oussama BAALBAKI and Prof. Adel El Kordi at Materials Beirut Arab University laboratory.
Delivery of the award by the Minister
LIRA Objectives
The main objective of Lira is to encourage industrial-academic cooperation toward building a knowledge based economy by matching university research activities with industry needs. This annual event offers a national platform for potential new product and services. LIRA brings together academic and industrial expertise, providing an opportunity for industry and academia, both public and private, to meet and exchange their research findings. The program has brought about a great achievement for the national industrial sector by increasing its competitiveness, creating higher added value products, developing production lines.
About the Project
The 3 D Concrete Printing becomes an innovative construction method that promises to be highly advantageous in construction field in terms of optimizing construction time, cost, design flexibility, error reduction. Such optimization and features will lead a revolution in construction especially for Architectures with big imagination, creativity and especially through wars where refuges are in need for fast and cheap construction. The 3D concrete printing (3D concrete) has attracted some companies to make research on because of its uniqueness over traditional building method. Where this machine decreases labor and material, saving lots of money and reducing error. The machine allows the flexibility in building complex or irregular shapes.
Several criteria had to be taken into consideration during the design, where the machine must be capable for holding fresh concrete and pumping them through nozzle while moving in controlled direction through X, Y, Z axis. The concrete mix must be designed to meet certain vital criteria that have a direct relationship with the methodology of 3D Concrete Printing which is the process of making a construction from three-dimensional digital model, typically by laying down layers of concrete material in succession, so the following four key benchmarking properties have been identified in order to prepare the mix specifically for this process: Workability, Extrudability (a continuous easy-flowing paste), Buildability which refers to the ability of the concrete layer to hold the layers above it without collapsing.
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