Imagine using a giant, custom-knitted sweater as a mold to pour concrete into. Instead of using wasteful wooden boards that get thrown away, these knitted shapes stay in place and allow for complex, curved designs. It's like 3D printing a fabric shell that tells the concrete exactly where to go to use the least amount of material possible.
Traditional concrete formwork relies on single-use timber or foam, which is wasteful, expensive, and makes complex curved designs difficult to build. This leads to higher material consumption and increased CO2 emissions in construction.
A unified computational design and fabrication workflow for 3D knitted textile formworks and an open-source material database.
If you are a firm dealing with the high cost and waste of single-use timber molds for curved buildings — this project developed a computational design workflow that creates 3D knitted formworks. This allows for the construction of double-curved concrete shells with significantly lower material consumption.
If you are a manufacturer dealing with the labor-intensive process of milling foam for complex geometries — this project developed a digital fabrication method for seamless textiles. This enables the production of reliable, cost-effective structural solutions that reduce embodied carbon.
If you are a textile producer dealing with a lack of high-value industrial applications for 3D knitting — this project developed a method to create structural metamaterials for the building sector. This opens a new market for tailored, high-strength technical textiles used in construction.
Based on available project data, it replaces expensive, labor-intensive, and wasteful single-use timber or milled foam formworks with cost-effective 3D knitted textiles.
The project aims for widespread adoption by creating an open-source material database and a unified computational workflow to reduce the need for specialized manual knowledge.
Based on available project data, the project intends to establish an open-source material database to facilitate the adoption of these sustainable practices.
It combines computational structural design and optimization into a unified workflow that incorporates fabrication constraints directly into the design process.
The project is active from 2024-10-01 to 2028-09-30, indicating that full results and validated workflows will be available by late 2028.
The consortium is a small, focused group of 3 partners from 3 countries (Germany, Netherlands, Romania). It features a 33% industry ratio with 1 industrial partner and 2 universities, suggesting a strong academic lead with a direct link to commercial application via the industrial member.
Contact the Technical University of Munich (TUM) regarding the FlexiForm project.
Contact SciTransfer to identify potential industrial partners for the WP5 demonstration phase.
