The research infrastructure of TRR 277 Additive Manufacturing in Construction

The global challenges of our time are climate change, population growth and the reduction of resource consumption. For the building industry, this means building more in the coming decades while at the same time using fewer resources and producing fewer emissions. The building industry, which is traditionally organised by craftsmen, is not prepared either technologically or in terms of personnel to meet these challenges economically and ecologically. This is where the Collaborative Research Centre TRR 277 Additive Manufacturing in Construction (AMC) of the both Universities of TU Braunschweig and TU Munich comes in with its basic research. The AMC considers additive manufacturing to be a key digital technology for the construction industry, because it combines the advantages of automated and customised manufacturing. In additive manufacturing, components are built up layer by layer without using a separate formwork. This creates fundamentally new requirements for materials, process technologies as well as design and construction and can only be researched in highly interdisciplinary teams of scientists from the fields of civil and mechanical engineering. The basis for cross-material research into different additive manufacturing technologies for application in construction is the research infrastructure in the field of digital building fabrication that has been systematically built up over many years. At its two locations, TU Braunschweig and TU Munich, the AMC can rely on the most innovative research facilities. These include both DFG-funded large-scale research equipment such as the Digital Building Fabrication Laboratory (DBFL) and the RoboCoop(3D), as well as a large number of self-financed innovative research devices at both locations. The AMC research infrastructure is constantly being expanded and extended in the ongoing research project. This article presents the existing research infrastructure as well as the research infrastructure currently being acquired and planned.