Metabolizing Heat: Thermally Tuned 3D-printed Envelopes

Metabolizing Heat: Thermally Tuned 3D-printed Envelopes

Extrusion-based additive manufacturing (AM) technologies offer innovative design strategies to tackle environmental challenges caused by the building construction industry's high carbon footprint. Although still in the early stages in building construction, Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing (MMAM) has emerged as a promising technology to reduce the embodied carbon of 3D-printed structures by minimizing the use of structural materials through topology-optimization strategies. However, thermal management of large-scale AM structures is often limited to extruding a single homogeneous material, resulting in structures that serve as load-bearing formwork for cast insulation. In contrast, MMAM allows for the fabrication of functionally graded materials (FGMs) by controlling the extrusion ratio between two or more distinct materials, producing components with multiple performance characteristics and functions. While research has primarily focused on improving the structural performance of 3D-printed envelopes, less effort has been directed toward optimizing their thermal performance and energy efficiency.

The Metabolizing Heat research project introduces environmental tectonics as a new design paradigm driven by AM technologies, envisioning the building envelope topology as an active, adaptive system that interacts with and utilizes environmental dynamics to improve thermal management and energy efficiency in 3D-printed buildings. A design-to-construction framework was developed, leveraging MMAM, incorporating functionally graded material (FGM) strategies, and moving beyond the uniform material distribution typical of conventional AM techniques. This offers a new, energy-efficient building topology that responds more effectively to local environmental conditions. The design process integrates environmental data to inform a gradual transition along the envelope between heterogeneous material concentrations of clay and thermal energy storage (TES) phase change materials (PCMs). The FGM design is translated into the additive manufacturing process through a novel G-Code protocol that locally tunes different material properties and optimizes their distribution during additive manufacturing. 

Additionally, a new MMAM technology based on dynamic-mixing extrusion was developed, enabling the fabrication of clay-based FGM components. This technology provides better control over material ratios during deposition, allows for smoother transitions between various material properties, and offers higher material resolution compared to traditional multi-nozzle systems used in MMAM.

Project Date: 2022-present

Researchers: Elena Petruzzi and Alexandros Tsamis

Collaborator: Chaitanya Ullal