What if construction materials might be put together and brought apart as easily as LEGO bricks? Such reconfigurable masonry can be disassembled at the top of a constructing’s lifetime and reassembled right into a recent structure, in a sustainable cycle that might supply generations of buildings using the identical physical constructing blocks.
That is the thought behind circular construction, which goals to reuse and repurpose a constructing’s materials each time possible, to attenuate the manufacturing of recent materials and reduce the development industry’s “embodied carbon,” which refers back to the greenhouse gas emissions related to every process throughout a constructing’s construction, from manufacturing to demolition.
Now MIT engineers, motivated by circular construction’s eco potential, are developing a brand new form of reconfigurable masonry constructed from 3D-printed, recycled glass. Using a custom 3D glass printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks, each in the form of a figure eight, which are designed to interlock, very similar to LEGO bricks.
In mechanical testing, a single glass brick withstood pressures much like that of a concrete block. As a structural demonstration, the researchers constructed a wall of interlocking glass bricks. They envision that 3D-printable glass masonry might be reused repeatedly over as recyclable bricks for constructing facades and internal partitions.
“Glass is a highly recyclable material,” says Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “We’re taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the top of a structure’s life, could be disassembled and reassembled right into a recent structure, or could be stuck back into the printer and changed into a very different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular constructing material.”
“Glass as a structural material form of breaks people’s brains a bit bit,” says Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student and researcher in each MIT’s Media Lab and Lincoln Laboratory, who can also be founder and director of Evenline. “We’re showing that is a chance to push the bounds of what is been done in architecture.”
Becker and Stern, with their colleagues, detail their glass brick design in a study appearing within the journal Glass Structures and Engineering. Their MIT co-authors include lead writer Daniel Massimino and Charlotte Folinus, together with Ethan Townsend at Evenline.
Lock step
The inspiration for the brand new circular masonry design arose partly in MIT’s Glass Lab, where Becker and Stern, then undergraduate students, first learned the art and science of blowing glass.
“I discovered the fabric fascinating,” says Stern, who later designed a 3D printer able to printing molten recycled glass — a project he took on while studying within the mechanical engineering department. “I began pondering of how glass printing can find its place and do interesting things, construction being one possible route.”
Meanwhile, Becker, who accepted a college position at MIT, began exploring the intersection of producing and design, and ways to develop recent processes that enable revolutionary designs.
“I get enthusiastic about expanding design and manfucaturing spaces for difficult materials with interesting characteristics, like glass and its optical properties and recyclability,” Becker says. “So long as it is not contaminated, you possibly can recycle glass almost infinitely.”
She and Stern teamed as much as see whether and the way 3D-printable glass might be made right into a structural masonry unit as sturdy and stackable as traditional bricks. For his or her recent study, the team used the Glass 3D Printer 3 (G3DP3), the newest version of Evenline’s glass printer, which pairs with a furnace to melt crushed glass bottles right into a molten, printable form that the printer then deposits in layered patterns.
The team printed prototype glass bricks using soda-lime glass that is usually utilized in a glassblowing studio. They incorporated two round pegs onto each printed brick, much like the studs on a LEGO brick. Just like the toy blocks, the pegs enable bricks to interlock and assemble into larger structures. One other material placed between the bricks prevent scratches or cracks between glass surfaces but could be removed if a brick structure were to be dismantled and recycled, also allowing bricks to be remelted within the printer and formed into recent shapes. The team decided to make the blocks right into a figure-eight shape.
“With the figure-eight shape, we are able to constrain the bricks while also assembling them into partitions which have some curvature,” Massimino says.
Stepping stones
The team printed glass bricks and tested their mechanical strength in an industrial hydraulic press that squeezed the bricks until they began to fracture. The researchers found that the strongest bricks were in a position to hold as much as pressures which are comparable to what concrete blocks can withstand. Those strongest bricks were made mostly from printed glass, with a individually manufactured interlocking feature that attached to the underside of the brick. These results suggest that almost all of a masonry brick might be constructed from printed glass, with an interlocking feature that might be printed, solid, or individually manufactured from a unique material.
“Glass is a sophisticated material to work with,” Becker says. “The interlocking elements, constructed from a unique material, showed probably the most promise at this stage.”
The group is looking into whether more of a brick’s interlocking feature might be constructed from printed glass, but doesn’t see this as a dealbreaker in moving forward to scale up the design. To display glass masonry’s potential, they constructed a curved wall of interlocking glass bricks. Next, they aim to construct progressively larger, self-supporting glass structures.
“We have now more understanding of what the fabric’s limits are, and methods to scale,” Stern says. “We’re pondering of stepping stones to buildings, and wish to begin with something like a pavilion — a short lived structure that humans can interact with, and that you might then reconfigure right into a second design. And you might imagine that these blocks could undergo a number of lives.”
This research was supported, partially, by the Bose Research Grant Program and MIT’s Research Support Committee.
