How to Build (and Rebuild) With Glass
upstart writes:
How to build (and rebuild) with glass:
[...] For their new study, Becker, Stern, and coauthors Daniel Massimino, SM '24, and Charlotte Folinus '20, SM '22, of MIT and Ethan Townsend at Evenline used a glass printer that pairs with a furnace to melt crushed glass bottles into a material that can be deposited in layered patterns. They printed prototype bricks using soda-lime glass that is typically used in a glassblowing studio. Two round pegs made of a different material, similar to the studs on a Lego brick, are incorporated into each one so they can interlock. Another material placed between the bricks prevents scratches or cracks but can be removed if a structure is to be dismantled and recycled. The prototypes' figure-eight shape allows assembly into curved walls, though recycled bricks could also be remelted in the printer and formed into new shapes. The group is looking into whether more of the interlocking feature could be made from printed glass too.
The team printed glass bricks and tested their mechanical strength in an industrial hydraulic press that squeezed the bricks until they began to fracture. The researchers found that the strongest bricks were able to hold up to pressures that are comparable to what concrete blocks can withstand. Those strongest bricks were made mostly from printed glass, with a separately manufactured interlocking feature attached to the bottom of the brick. These results suggest that most of a masonry brick could be made from printed glass, with an interlocking feature that could be printed, cast, or separately manufactured from a different material."Glass is a complicated material to work with," said Becker. "The interlocking elements, made from a different material, showed the most promise at this stage."The group is looking into whether more of a brick's interlocking feature could be made from printed glass, but doesn't see this as a dealbreaker in moving forward to scale up the design. To demonstrate glass masonry's potential, they constructed a curved wall of interlocking glass bricks. Next, they aim to build progressively bigger, self-supporting glass structures."We have more understanding of what the material's limits are, and how to scale," said Stern. "We're thinking of stepping stones to buildings, and want to start with something like a pavilion - a temporary structure that humans can interact with, and that you could then reconfigure into a second design. And you could imagine that these blocks could go through a lot of lives."
MIT spinoff 3D prints architectural glass bricks
According to MIT, engineers, motivated by circular construction's eco potential, are developing a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D printed, recycled glass. Using a custom 3D glass printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks - each in the shape of a figure eight, that are designed to interlock, much like LEGO bricks.
In mechanical testing, a single glass brick withstood pressures similar to that of a concrete block. As a structural demonstration, the researchers constructed a wall of interlocking glass bricks. They envision that 3D printable glass masonry could be reused many times over as recyclable bricks for building facades and internal walls.
"Glass is a highly recyclable material," said Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "We're taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the end of a structure's life, can be disassembled and reassembled into a new structure, or can be stuck back into the printer and turned into a completely different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material."
"Glass as a structural material kind of breaks people's brains a little bit," said Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student and researcher in both MIT's Media Lab and Lincoln Laboratory, who is also the Founder and Director of Evenline. "We're showing this is an opportunity to push the limits of what's been done in architecture."
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