Mechanical Modeling for Prediction of Structural Stability of Cylindrical Structures During 3D Concrete Printing (2025-02)¶

Additive manufacturing using 3D concrete printing has rapidly developed in the past decade due to its advantages, such as formwork-free construction and reduced labor costs. Predicting the structural stability of objects during the printing process is crucial, as it directly affects material efficiency and economic viability. For cylindrical structures, numerical models often tend to overestimate the elastic buckling length. Additionally, numerical methods simulating successive layer deposition require the optimization of multiple parameters, including mesh resolution, element type, and surface interactions, which significantly increases computational complexity. To address these limitations, this study establishes a mechanistic model for cylindrical structures to predict global and local buckling under non-uniform gravitational loading, time-dependent heterogeneous material properties, and geometric imperfections. Experimental validation confirmed that thinner shells are prone to asymmetric higher order buckling modes. The proposed model provides a conservative estimate of the buckling length while reducing computation time and can be utilized to optimize printing parameters while ensuring the structural stability of cylindrical structures.