3D concrete printing success: an exhaustive diagnosis and failure modes analysis

This article seeks to implement quality management tools within 3D concrete printing (3DCP) to propose a generative failure mode analysis which was rarely applied to 3DCP realm. Actually, 3DCP technologies have become a set of emergent processes that are used worldwide in many applications inasmuch as they are generating profits but also costs due to its infancy stage. Since 3DCP processes are a versatile domain, this investigation started with an extended state-of-art that allowed listing the most significant process and machines factors that are involved in the success of the printing. Based on main printing principles, printability, extrudability, and buildability, number of associated failures were listed and then organized in terms of cause/effect (Ishikawa) diagrams and SWOT matrices; thereafter, fault tree analysis (FTA) was proposed as a generic way to fit number of 3DCP failures’ analysis. Furthermore, the approach was projected on existing researches; four case studies were applied and the corresponding FTAs were built to evince the proposed methodology. Hence, it was proved that the risk analysis approach built herein could be adapted to real 3DCP applications by associating the corresponding fault trees; the FTA diagrams should graphically facilitate the failure modes mechanisms within 3DCP applications.