Project Details
Projekt
Non-Waste-Wax-Formwork: Novel precise formwork-technology on basis of 100% recyclable industrial wax for the fabrication of geometrically complex concrete elements
Subject Area
Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
Term
from 2014 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 257109752
Due to the fineness and high strength of UHPC (ultra high performance concrete) new opportunities are enabled for future applications in connection with efficient filigree construction elements. Despite the intensive research UHPC is until now fewly applied in the construction practice. One reason is the missing regulation by national standards. Another major reason in the opinion of the applicants are the circumstances in the building industry which is not yet prepared for the use of UHPC. Because the production of slabs, columns, plates and walls made of UHPC with the marketable straight and even formwork systems does not fit to the potential of material and is economically not useful. Indeed freeform formwork is technically possible, but requires expensive special solutions.This is where the research project initiates: The aim of the project is the development of a novel universal formwork technology that allows the fabrication of concrete members, made from UHPC up to lightweight concrete, as efficiently as possible, in nearly any geometrical shape and with maximum precision. Moreover, the new formwork technology is to be sustainable, why waste products are aimed to be avoided. Therefore industrial wax is used as shaped material, which can be completely recycled by melting. In the on-going SPP 1542 project `Development of New Jointing Systems for Lightweight UHPC-Structures´, which the applicant Professor Kloft is working on in cooperation with Professor Budelmann from iBMB of the TU Braunschweig , wax has already been used to produce formwork for highly precise jointing systems for dry fitting of UHPC - elements. Because wax has a very good dimensional stability and workability at room temperature, a variety of small-scale preliminary experiments has been performed using various synthetic paraffin-, polyethylene- and Fischer-Tropsch-waxes. The transferability of the technology to more complex and larger sized components should be clarified by the applied project. In order to cover a wide range of shapes and applications, the project `Non-waste-wax-formwork´ aims to develop two basic applications. The production of `outer- wax-formworks´ into which the concrete is poured and the production of `cavity-wax-formworks´, which displace the filled concrete to create voids inside the concrete member after the wax has been melted out. Through the cooperation of the Institute of Structural Design (ITE) and the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Technology (IWF), the experience of free-form formwork will be merged within the manufacturing and automation technologies of mechanical engineering. These ensures the prompt provision of results for the research groups of the SPP 1542 in just two years.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 1542:
Future Concrete Structures Using Bionic, Mathematical and Engineering Formfinding Principles
Participating Persons
Professor Dr.-Ing. Harald Budelmann; Professor Dr. Henning Menzel
