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‘World’s First’ 3D Printed Concrete Bicycle Bridge Installed in Netherlands

via Youtubevia Youtube

The Netherlands has a ton of bridges, especially pedestrian and biking bridges, thanks to its abundant system of canals.  Perhaps because of that, they have become a leader in 3D printing technology when it comes to bridges. 

A couple years ago, Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, announced their intentions to print the first pedestrian bridge out of steel. That steel bridge has yet to finish and is hoping to be unveiled in June of 2018.

Most recently, a team of researchers from TU Eindhoven and construction group BAM infrastructure, joined forces to print a 26 foot long (8m) bicycle bridge in the Dutch province of Brabant. It took around 3 months for robots to print the concrete structures, which were placed in 800 layers, pre-stressed, and reinforced, according to dezeen.

The team is referring to the bridge as the “world’s first 3D printed reinforced, pre-stressed concrete bridge”. There was another bridge that opened in Spain in December of last year, which claims to be the first 3D printed bridge, but it’s not clear if that was pre-stressed or not. 

The concrete sections were printed offsite by the robots and later secured together, transported to the site, and installed under human power. Since using robots clearly doesn’t speed up the construction process yet, one benefit of printing the concrete is the ability to give it an extremely unique design, allowing less waste and making it more sustainable.

You can check out the 3D printing process in the video below, uploaded to Youtube by New Civil Engineer.  Unfortunately, we English speakers will need to rely on the subtitles for the dialogue.

FieldLens, a web based application available on both Android and iOs, allows for real-time documentation of safety hazards, job site notes, and punch lists.  The app eliminates the need to re-type your notes or send separate emails to the correct people, because it can create instantaneous reports on all the information you typed in to your phone or tablet on the job site.

Recently, Fieldlens added three new features that the company says are requested often

The Netherlands has a ton of bridges, especially pedestrian and biking bridges, thanks to its abundant system of canals.  Perhaps because of that, they have become a leader in 3D printing technology when it comes to bridges. 

Concrete is an extremely strong building material, but has a notoriously weak tensile strength.  In order to resist tension, bending, and shear forces, steel rebar or other reinforcement materials are added either prior to the placement or into the mix.  Even with reinforcement, concrete is still extremely rigid and prone to cracking.  In the event of a major earthquake, the uneven and horizontal forces can cause structures to crack and, in the worst case, cause failure.

The immense technological growth the construction industry has seen in the past decade has been a refreshing change, to say the least.  Fax machines, large filing cabinets, and redundant work are slowly becoming a thing of the past. More importantly, software developers are actually paying attention to the construction industry, making our lives collectively easier, while giving us more data to make better decisions. Bluebeam, maker of one of the industry’s favorite construction document software, has recently announced a wireless digital sensor specifically for under construction buildings.

In July, we shared an article about a new augmented reality app that would allow iPhone and iPad users to use their devices’s camera as a tape measure.  That app, Air Measure, is now available for download after Apple’s iOs 11 release. 

As electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular around the world, researchers are trying to find ways to adapt the technology to heavier duty applications.  Due to the large size of projects and amount of money in the industry, the mining industry has seen its fair share of technological advancement. Several manufacturers, like Komatsu, have developed and released driverless dump trucks for mining operations in the past few years.  A team of companies in Switzerland is now working on a gigantic battery powered dump truck that will be tested for 10 years.

Video feeds on a construction site are not only great for timelapse videos, they can potentially help stop intruders who enter your site.