Does 3D printing have a future in the construction industry and could it be a disruptive technology?

Details

Supervisors

De Broqueville, Olivier

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

3D printing began to revolutionise the market in the late 1980s. Since, 3D printers have evolved and have progressively made their way to various disciplines such as aerospace, medicine or construction. However, it is only recently that entry-level models, more affordable and accurate, have made their appearance on the market. Their introduction has rapidly gained a lot of success and has emphasized the development of the Do-It-Yourself approaches. In recent years, the need to automate the construction process for structures and buildings has been constantly propelled by the lack of innovation in the building processes, which has remained almost entirely based on manual labour for years. As a result, organisations around the world have demonstrated a keen interest in 3D printing projects in the construction industry. Compared to traditional methods, the use of 3D printers has revealed social, economic, technical and environmental benefits and opens the possibility of building structures layer by layer from digital data. This master’s thesis presents a holistic approach to 3D printing technology and its applications in the construction sector through extensive literature review. In recent years, the technology has shown potential in a wide range of fields: the building industry being a new exciting and growing area for 3D printing. This technique can create the opportunity for customisation of large-scale projects since it removes the restrictions of shape in the traditional ways of building. However, there are still many unsolved issues related to the 3D technological innovation in this sector. One of them is its disruptive aspect on the market, the human being, the regulation and the environment. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to better understand whether 3D printing technologies will have a sustainable future in the construction industry. A content analysis on the state of the art of 3D technologies in construction and interviews with industry experts were conducted to identify their potentially disruptive impact on the market. A questionnaire survey was also adopted to complete the data collection and collect professional’s and market’s opinions on the use of the technology.