There is a strong demand for new paradigms for design and development of advanced high-performance civil infrastructure materials and structures with exceptional mechanical properties, durability, constructability, resilience, sustainability, and low-cost.

3D printing provides increased design flexibility and offers a promising new avenue for unprecedented control over the shape, composition, functionality, and embedment of components (e.g. fibers, nanomaterials, and sensors) that are impossible to achieve with current concrete technologies of casting and precast processing. These unique prospects of 3D printing open new material formulations not conceivable before and the creation of materials that integrate form and function by precisely controlling and shaping the material internal structure.

Our group aims to establish a paradigm shift in material design to address challenges of printing material itself (rheology, inter-layer bonding and set time), the introduction of vast numbers of inter-filament interfaces (between printed elements), the control of designed and unintended inclusions and their associated interfaces, and the durability of the printed material, along with the critical need for accelerating innovation of civil infrastructure materials.

This research is a collaboration with Purdue University and Tennessee Tech.

NSF 1563389