Flexural behaviour of AR-glass textile reinforced 3D printed concrete beams

3D concrete printing (3DCP) enables automation of construction manufacturing through digital design and workflow, adding value through high degrees of form freedom. The process constraints during the printing, however, hamper the application of reinforcement and hence limit the ductile behaviour that is achievable in 3D printed concrete structures. Although a number of reinforcement strategies have been developed and these strategies can to some extent address these limitations, the reinforcement challenges of 3D printed concrete structures are not satisfactorily addressed yet. This paper proposes another reinforcement strategy of incorporating alkali-resistant (AR)-glass textile between the printed concrete layers. To validate the strategy, small-scale printed concrete beam specimens reinforced with one to three layers of textiles were tested under three-point bending. The results were compared to those obtained from equivalent ‘cast’ specimens. Comparable flexural behaviours were observed between the cast and printed textile reinforced concrete (TRC) specimens. Moreover, the flexural behaviours of printed specimens exhibited lower scatter than the flexural behaviours of cast specimens, which was probably due to the precise digitally controlled printing process. Future research should focus on the application of textile reinforcement in more complex 3D printed concrete structures.