Thesis of Xinrui Yang

Vers un processus d'automatisation de l'impression 3D dans la construction en environnement non contrôlé

Additive Manufacturing (AM) with concrete material, also known as 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP), has gained increasing attention in the construction industry as well as in academia across various research fields including material science, automatic control, and robotics. This technology enables the fabrication of designed 3D complex geometries in a layer-by-layer manner, using construction materials such as concrete that can come from recycled demolition wastes containing RFA (Recyclable Fine Aggregates). A robotic system guides a nozzle that deposits material along a defined trajectory. Most 3DCP technologies are performed under controlled environments without environmental disturbances. However, in uncontrolled environments, changes in temperature and humidity can significantly affect the rheological properties of the fresh concrete, thereby impacting print quality. Specifically, the material behavior changes, causing the width of the material filament to deviate from its desired value. To address the issue of printing process control under uncontrolled environments, this thesis work focuses on adaptive compensation for deviations in material filament width during deposition. The printing process involves a trade-off between two different dynamics: a rapid dynamic system, namely the robot, which is a mechatronic system, and a slow dynamic system, namely material pumping, which is a fluid mechanical system. Thus, the research question consists of: How to adapt the printing robot’s velocity along the trajectory to maintain continuous and consistent material deposition, under the constraints of trajectory curvature, desired material filament width, and flow rate, while accounting for fluctuations in external temperature and humidity. For this purpose, an integrated approach has been proposed that covers the overall process: pre-printing, in-printing, and post-printing.

Jury

M. Rochdi MERZOUKI Université de Lille Directeur de thèse - M. Taha BOUKHOBZA Université de Lorraine Rapporteur - Mme Mitra FOULADIRAD Centrale Marseille Rapporteure - M. Sébastien REMOND Université d'Orléans Examinateur - M. Kamal YOUCEF-TOUMI Massachusetts Institute of Technology Examinateur - M. Abdelaziz BENALLEGUE Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Examinateur - M. Othman LAKHAL Université de Lille Examinateur - Mme Aurélie DE BOISSIEU Université de Liège Examinatrice - Mme Agnès PETIT- MARKOWSKI MOBBOT Invitée.

Thesis of the team SoftE defended on 30/11/2023