Cornell College researchers are creating know-how to 3D print concrete underwater for maritime building and infrastructure restore. The interdisciplinary workforce, led by assistant professor Sriramya Nair, obtained a $1.4 million grant from DARPA in Might 2025 to advance the know-how inside a one-year timeframe.
The challenge addresses a number of technical challenges, together with stopping washout the place cement particles fail to bind throughout underwater deposition. DARPA requires the concrete to consist primarily of seafloor sediment with minimal cement content material to scale back transportation logistics. “No one is doing this proper now,” Nair stated. “No one takes seafloor sediment and prints with it.”
The analysis workforce has been conducting check prints in laboratory water tanks utilizing a 6,000-pound industrial robotic. They efficiently demonstrated progress towards DARPA’s excessive sediment content material targets throughout a September go to by company officers. The workforce contains specialists from a number of universities engaged on materials design and fabrication processes.
Since underwater monitoring presents visibility challenges on account of sediment turbidity, researchers are creating sensor methods to trace printing high quality in actual time. The challenge will culminate in a March demonstration the place a number of competing groups will 3D print arches underwater. Cornell’s workforce is certainly one of six teams competing to satisfy DARPA’s benchmarks for the underwater concrete printing problem.
Supply: information.cornell.edu
