SUCO - Sustainable concrete formworks

The possibilities and developments of digital form finding are increasing, but in practice there is still a lack of sustainable implementation and realisation of complex, thin and doubly curved precast concrete parts. At the current state of research, these parts can only be produced at a high costs due to expensive materials and high production costs.
This research developed a zero-waste manufacturing process for sustainable, complex, scalable, recyclable and reusable formworks for industrial production.

The subject of the research was the examination of industrial waste such as used sand and wood for their suitability as formwork materials, and their processing using digital manufacturing methods. At each stage of the process, testing methods were used to check and optimise the moulding materials. Demonstrators were produced in different scales with the help of industrial partners to check and optimise the results. Formworks were constantly checked, analysed and evaluated to generate quantifiable and comparable parameters. The research tested the compressive strength, the characterisation of the surface quality and the precision between the prototypes and the digital 3D model. An experimental material study was carried out in order to select the basic formwork materials. These included deposited waste foundry sand based on quartz sand and quartz sand with bentonite (moulding or bentonite sand), and reusable and recyclable sintered ceramics. Renewable raw materials such as waste wood, in the form of chips and wood flour, were also included in the research.

Basic mould materials have no binding function and are dependent on the intermediatory effect of a binding agent system to form a compact, stable collective for the production of formworks and to withstand the forces that arise, such as those of digital production, transport and handling in precasting plants.

The complete abstract is available for download (on the right).