Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

A feasible method for measuring the buildability of fresh 3D printing

mortar
Qiang Yuan a,⇑, Zemin Li a, Dajun Zhou a,b, Tingjie Huang a, Hai Huang a,c, Dengwu Jiao d,⇑, Caijun Shi d
a
School of Civil Engineering, National Engineering Laboratory for Construction of High Speed Railway, Central South University, Changsha 410075, China
b
China Electrical Construction Zhongnan Survey and Design Research Institute Co., Ltd., Changsha 410075, China
c
Anhui Engineering Material Technology Co., Ltd of CTCE Group, Hefei 230000, China
d
Key Laboratory for Green & Advanced Civil Engineering Materials and Application Technology of Hunan Province, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China

h i g h l i g h t s

Buildability of 3D printing mortar was evaluated by the deformation of stacking layers.

A deformation monitoring device was designed to monitor the deformation of printing layer.

An equation between the optimal interval time and structural build-up rate was proposed.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The buildability of fresh concrete is of great importance to 3D printing technology. In this paper, the
Received 29 May 2019 buildability of 3D printing mortar was evaluated from the perspective of deformation of fresh mortar dur-
Received in revised form 22 July 2019 ing the process of printing. A deformation monitoring device was designed to monitor the change of
Accepted 30 July 2019
deformation of printing layer with stacking. The physical and chemical effects on the evolution of struc-
tural build-up were evaluated by the growth rate of static yield stress and penetration resistance. Results
showed that the chemical effect was more effective than the physical effect, and the combination of phys-
Keywords:
ical and chemical effects was the most effective one. The growth of penetration resistance had a linear
3D printing
Buildability
relationship with the growth of static yield stress, and both of them can be used to characterize the struc-
Deformation tural build-up of fresh mortar. The deformation value and optimal printing interval time could be
Structural build-up obtained by simulating the printing process using the deformation monitoring device. An equation
Interval time between the optimal interval time and the growth rate of static yield stress was established.
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 3D construction technology, the main methods contain contour

With the continuous renewal of technology, new opportunities
and challenges are presented to the construction industry. Digital
fabrication technique abandons the traditional formwork construc-
tion technology and thus develops rapidly. It presents in different
forms, such as 3D concrete technology, smart dynamic cast and
mesh mold. The Journal of Cement and Concrete Research recently
published a special issue for the RILEM 1st International Confer-
ence on Concrete and Digital Fabrication [1]. This special issue
gives a systematic overview of the vision, manufacturing, materials
and mechanics of digital fabrication techniques. For extrusion-based
⇑ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: yuanqiang@csu.edu.cn (Q. Yuan), jiaodengwu@hnu.edu.cn
(D. Jiao).
crafting [2] and 3D printing concrete [2,3].
3D printing concrete needs to meet the printability require-
ments, which are the abilities for fresh material to pass through
the conveying and extrusion system smoothly, and then stack layer
by layer to form printing objects. Similar definitions have been
introduced in [3,4]. Printability is controlled by many factors,
including flowability (workability), extrudability, buildability,
interlayer bonding and open time. Flowability and extrudability
are interrelated, while flowability and buildability are opposed to
each other. Good printability can only be achieved by coordinating
the relationships between various factors. Le et al. [5] found that
low flowability resulted in an increase in voids between filaments,
and thus the average bond strength decreased by 53% and 77% at
resting times of 30 min and 7 days, respectively. Ma et al. [6] indi-
cated that at same extrusion rate, the flowability of the material
decreased with time, and the extruded concrete filaments became

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.07.326
0950-0618/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600

thinner and eventually could not be extruded. Soltan et al. [4]
designed a self-reinforced cementitious composite to reduce or
eliminate the need for steel reinforcement in printed structures,
providing more freedom and efficiency for large-scale 3D printing
processes. Le et al. [2] extended the open time up to 100 min with
shear strength of 0.55 kPa, and the mixture could build up to 61
layers (the diameter of the nozzle is 9 mm.) without noticeable
deformation for the entire printing project. Perrot et al. [7]
researched the effect of thickness of a base layer on the overall sta-
bility of the structure and indicated that the instability of the struc-
ture is mainly caused by the collapse of the first layer and the self-
buckling.
The buildability determines the vertical printing rate during
printing process. The ideal buildability is that the concrete can
keep its shape after extrusion and withstand the upper loads with-
out deformation. Perfect buildability can give full play to the
advantage of 3D printing – rapid construction. Conversely, poor
buildability directly affects the vertical printing rate, and even
causes collapse of the printing components [2,6]. Many studies
have been carried out on the buildability of 3D printing concrete.
Generally, researches are divided into practical measurement and
theoretical calculation. Le et al. [2] evaluated the buildability of
concrete by the number of printed layers and the deformation of
a single layer. Zhang et al. [8] used the visible deformation or col-
lapse to assess the buildability of printing materials. More quanti-
tatively, Ma et al. [6] compared the effect of different amounts of
tailings on the buildability by the overall vertical deformation of
the printing object. They found that a favorable buildability and
high mechanical strength could be obtained by replacing 30% nat-
ural sand with mining tailings. Zhang et al. [8] used the green
strength of fresh mortar after mixing for 0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 min
to evaluate the buildability. Kazeman et al. [9] studied the shape
stability by ‘‘cylinder stability test”, which can recognize the defor-
mation by millimeters. Moreover, the final deformation value of
fresh mortar at rest is also related to its internal structure build-up.
Structural build-up refers to the phenomenon that the
‘‘strength” of fresh paste or mortar increases with time due to
chemical reaction and physical actions. Both buildability and struc-
tural build-up are related to time, and thus the buildability can be
determined by the structural build-up rate. For the same flowabil-
ity and extrudability, the faster the structural build-up is, the bet-
ter the buildability is. Fresh concrete behaves as solid when the
applied stress is below yield stress and liquid above this value
[10], respectively. During the deposition process, the cement-
At present, there is no effective and quantitative method to
evaluate the evaluation of 3D printing buildability with time.
Indeed, by observing the collapse or cracking of printing elements,
it is not sufficient to characterize the buildability of 3D printing
concretes with accurate dimensional requirements [2,6,8]. For
small deformation below millimeter, the rough loading device is
no longer applicable [8,10,16]. There is no doubt, then, that the
structural build-up is currently the most effective way to guide
construction, and will be the focus of future research [17,18]. How-
ever, due to the high price, rheometer is not always available for
many laboratories. In the present paper, a deformation monitoring
device was designed to monitor the development of specimen
deformation at different loading intervals. The efficiency of growth
rate of penetration resistance to describe the structural build-up
was evaluated. In order to provide more insightful evidence of
structural build-up, calorimetric test was conducted to follow the
hydration process of cement paste.
2. Materials and experimental programs
2.1. Materials and sample preparation
P.O 42.5 Portland cement (PC) complied with Chinese standard
GB175-2007 was used in this study. The polycarboxylate high-
range water reducer (HRWR) was used as superplasticizer. The
attapulgite (AG), and sodium gluconate (SG) were used to prepare
cement paste and mortar. The attapulgite was used to enhance the
structural build-up has been studied in [19]. Due to the rapid
hydration of sulphoaluminate cement, calcium gluconate is mainly
used to slow down the hydration reaction. The chemical composi-
tion and physical properties of the powders are given in Table 1.
The fineness modulus and apparent density of sand are 2.1 and
2.6 g/cm3, respectively. The maximum size of sand is 1.2 mm and
its graduation curve are shown in Fig. 1.
The water-to-cement (w/c) ratio and sand-to-binder (s/b) ratio
of mortars were fixed at 0.35 and 1.5, respectively. After adding all
of the water and superplasticizer into the mixer, the powder mate-
rials were gradually introduced. The slurry was first mixed at low
100
80
Percentage passing (%)

based materials should keep the shape and be able to bear the sub-
sequent upper loads. The shape stability [10,11] depends mainly
on the structural build-up of the material. At rest, the yield stress 60
of extruded material increases over time. However, structural
build-up alone is not enough to withstand the upper multi-layer 40
load. According to the ultimate failure theory of slump test [12],
Wangler et al. [13] pointed out that it would take less than
20
100 min to print an object with height of 1 m, relying solely on
structural build-up rate (Athix = 2 Pa/s). By conducting magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) velocimetry test, Jarny et al. [14] found 0
that thixotropic (reversible) effect dominated at short timescale.
The irreversible evolution of cement paste due to solid volume 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
increase caused chemical hydration, however, dominated under Sand size (mm)
relatively longer timescales [15].
Fig. 1. Sand graduation curve.

Table 1
Composition and physical properties of the powders used in this study.

CaO SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 SO3 MgO Other minor oxides Loss on ignition
Portland cement (PC) 62.56 20.76 7.31 3.25 2.81 2.91 0.4 0.31
Attapulgite (AG) 0.79 58.50 9.92 6.23 – 11.12 13.44 10.61
Sulphoaluminate cement (SAC) 42.84 5.89 15.88 0.982 54.62 0.679 2.01 –
 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600
speed for 30 s, followed by adding sand with rotator still running
up to 60 s. Afterwards, the mortar was mixed at high speed for
30 s, and then stopped for 60 s to homogenize the sample using a
trowel. Finally, high speed mixing for 60 s and low speed mixing
for 30 s were carried out. For all the mixes, the flowability was
fixed at 230 ± 5 mm. Table 2 shows mixture proportions and phys-
ical properties of four mixes. Mix No. 1 was the reference one, and
Mix No. 2 was the sample with thixotropic agent. Mix No. 3 was
the sample with accelerating agent (SAC), which can accelerate
the hydration rate of cement mortar. Since the hydration rate is
quite high and not applicable, retarding agent (SG) was added into
the mortar. Mix No. 4 was the sample with thixotropic, accelerat-
ing and retarding agents. The proportion of the paste was same as
that of the mortar.
2.2. Flowability test
The flowability test of mortar was conducted according to GB/T
2419-2005 [20]. HRWRA was used to balance the initial flowability
of mortar, which was fixed at 230 ± 5 mm for all the mixtures.
2.3. Rheological test
A coaxial cylinder rotary rheometer was used for the rheological
test. A vane rotator with four blades was used. The height and
width of each blade were 40.00 mm and 22.00 mm, respectively.
The gap between the blade and outer tube was 0.97 mm. The sur-
face of the outer tube was sandblasted to reduce the risk of slip-
page. Flow curve test was started at 7 min after first contact of
cement and water. The flow curve testing protocol can be found
in our previous papers [19,21]. The down-curve at shear rate of
20–80 s1 was fitted by Bingham model to obtain the dynamic
yield stress and plastic viscosity. After the flow curve test, the sam-
ple was rested for 15 min, then followed by stress growth test with
constant shear rate of 0.02 s1 for 30 s. Since the measuring limit of
the equipment is 7000 Pa, in order not to damage the rheometer,
for the mixes without SAC, the stress growth test was repeated
every 15 min until 45 min. For the mixes with SAC, the stress
growth test was repeated every 5 min until 25 min. During the
entire test, the temperature of all the samples was maintained at
25 °C by water bath. Each test was repeated for three times using
fresh samples.
Generally, the static yield stress increases linearly during the
dormant period [22]. As shown in Eq. (1), the structural build-up
rate Athix is defined as the increase rate of static yield stress over
time at rest [23].
s0 ðtÞ ¼ s0;0 þ Athix t
In layered extrusion, one would generally target constant verti-
cal building rates. The static yield stress of printed layer evolves
linearly over time. At the same time, the height of the printing
object, i.e. the weight acting on the bottom layer, also increases
with construction time. In case that the static yield stress can with-
stand the weight of printed layers, the relationship between struc-
tural build-up rate and printing interval time should meet Eq. (2).
kqgh - s0;0
Athix ¼
tint
Table 2
Mix proportions and properties of mortars.
No. w\c s\b PC SAC
1 0.35 1.5 100% – –
2 0.35 1.5 99% – 1%
3 0.35 1.5 90% 10%
4 0.35 1.5 89% 10%
3
where q is density of mortar, h is thickness of single printing layer, g
is the gravity constant, tint is printing interval time between layers
and k is dimensionless critical yield stress in slump damage model,
which is mainly related to the parameters of slump cone. By com-
paring ASTM Abrams cone (H0 = 300 mm, Rmin = 50 mm,
Rmax = 100 mm) and ASTM mini-cone (H0 = 50 mm, Rmin = 35 mm,
Rmax = 50 mm), Roussel et al. [24] found that the dimensionless crit-
ical yield stress was in the range of 0.5–0.66. The image drawn with
Eq. (2) is shown in Fig. 2. In the region under the curve, there will be
large deformation, collapse or cracking of the printing component
due to insufficient structural build-up rate.
2.4. Deformation test
The setup of the deformation monitoring device is shown in
Fig. 3. A cylindrical steel mold with 50 mm in diameter and
50 mm in height was used. Firstly, filled half height of the mold
with mortar and vibrated for 5 times on a vibration table. Then,
filled the remaining part and vibrated 5 times again. After stroke
off the excess mortar, the specimen was demolded. To prevent
water evaporation, oil was sprayed onto the surface of the fresh
demolded cylinder. The loading deformation testing procedure is
as follows:
(1) After demolding, the container with specimen was placed on
the deformation monitoring device. The laser spot was hit
onto the tray where the container was placed. Afterwards,
the height of the specimen was recorded as the initial value,
i.e. about 10 min after first contact of cement with water.
(2) At 12.5 min, fine sand with particle size of 0.15–0.3 mm was
added to one side wall of the pipe through a hopper, which
was used to avoid the impact of falling sand. The weight of
the sand was 46 g which was equal to the weight of one
layer of printing mortar. The addition process of the sand
should be conducted at a constant rate and finished within
5 s. The height of the specimen was continuously recorded
by the data logger.
ð1Þ
ð2Þ Fig. 2. Mathematical relationship between interval time and structural build-up
rate.
AG SG Initial setting (min) Final setting (min)
– 5.0 7.5
– 6.9 10.0
– 0.0008 3.3 7.2
1% 0.0008 2.2 5.3
4 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of deformation monitoring device.
(3) The step (2) was repeated after specific interval time. The
intervals selected in this study were 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and
10 min. In order to save time, if the height of the specimen
did not change, the loading can be stopped. The height
change of mortar over printing process can be obtained.
2.5. Penetration resistance measurements
Penetration resistance method is preferable in evaluating the
stiffness development of cementitious materials at early ages due
to its repeatability and easiness to implement. According to GB/T
50080-2002 [25], similar to ASTM C403 [26], the strength develop-
ment and setting time of the fresh mortar were obtained by mea-
suring the resistance of the mixtures to penetration by standard
needles. The penetration resistance was computed by dividing
the force by needles area. The initial and final setting time, corre-
sponding to the penetration resistance values of 3.5 MPa and
28 MPa respectively, were determined from the curve of penetra-
tion resistance versus elapsed time. Since the penetration instru-
ment only has a precision of 5 N, it is impossible to measure the
penetration resistance accurately at early ages. Therefore, during
the first hour of penetration resistance test, a 20 kg scale (accuracy
0.1 g) was placed on the tray. After simple modification, the accu-
racy of the device can reach 0.01 N. Each test was repeated for
three times.
2.6. Calorimetric test
The heat of hydration was measured using a TAM Air thermal
activity micro-calorimeter. 17.18 g sample of cement paste with
w/c of 0.35 were used for calorimetric measurement. The sealed
cups with paste were put into the thermostatic chamber with
25 °C. The data were recorded every 10 s.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Yield stress and plastic viscosity
The dynamic yield stress and plastic viscosity of mortars calcu-
lated from flow curves are given in Fig. 4. It can be seen from Fig. 4
that the addition of attapulgite significantly increased the dynamic
Fig. 4. Rheological parameters of mortars measured by dynamic shear curve test.
yield stress and plastic viscosity of mortars (No. 2 and No. 4), indi-
cating that the extrusion performance of mortar is improved and
the risk of cracks during extrusion is reduced [4]. As a kind of clay,
attapulgite is used to enhance the thixotropy of cement-based
materials, which can be observed in [27–31]. The clay can increase
the flocculation strength and floc size of cementitious materials,
resulting in an increase in viscosity and thixotropy of concrete
[32,33]. The addition of SAC also improved the dynamic yield stress
and plastic viscosity of mortars, to a less extent than the addition of
attapulgite.
3.2. Evolution of static yield stress
The increase of static yield stress indicates the structural build-
up of mortars. The quicker the static yield stress grows, the faster
structural build-up of mortar at rest is. The evolution of static yield
stress of mortars with elapsed time is presented in Fig. 5. It can be
seen that the values of static yield stress of mixture No. 2 were
slightly higher than that of mixture No. 1, but their growth rates
were similar. This means that the addition of attapulgite improved
the microstructural strength but slightly affected its growth rate.
This may be explained by the addition of polycarboxylate high-
range water reducer. As is well known, the flowability of mortar
is correlated to its yield stress and plastic viscosity. That is, mortars
with higher yield stress and plastic viscosity have smaller flowabil-
ity. The addition of attapulgite resulted in an increase in yield
4000
No.1
3500 No.2
No.3
3000
Static yield stress (Pa)
No.4
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Time (min)
Fig. 5. Evolution of static yield stress of mortars.
 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600 5

stress and plastic viscosity (which can be seen from Fig. 4), and
thus a reduction in flowability. In order to ensure the same initial
flowability for all mixtures, a bit more HRWR was added in mixture
No. 2, which has a detrimental effect on the structural build-up of
mortar. Therefore, although mixture No. 2 exhibited higher struc-
tural strength than mixture No. 1, they have similar growth rate
of structural build-up. It can also be seen that the values and
increasing rate of static yield stress of mixture No. 3 were appar-
ently higher than that of mixture No. 1. This indicates that the
replacement of Portland cement with SAC significantly improved
the structural build-up of mortars due to the fast hydration of
SAC. It is worthwhile to note that the incorporation of attapulgite
significantly increased the growth rate of static yield stress of mor-
tars containing 10% SAC. In comparison with the results obtained
by Billberg [22] and Perrot [16], the growth rates of static yield
stress obtained in this study were similar or even higher.
3.3. Deformation test
of mortar and enhances the shape stability. On the other side,
replacing Portland cement by SAC promotes the chemical hydra-
tion process, which results in a significant increase in structural
build-up. As can be seen from Fig. 6, collapse occurred at the load-
ing interval time of 0.5 min for mixtures No. 1 and No. 2. In the
cases of mixtures No. 3 and No. 4, there were no collapse observed.
This means that mixtures No. 3 and No. 4 possessed an enhanced
buildability comparing with mixtures No. 1 and No. 2. The concept
of optimal interval time is introduced in this paper. The optimal
interval time is the shortest printing interval, at which the printing
layer hardly deforms and the bond strength of neighboring layers
is affected to the smallest extent. From Fig. 6 we can conclude that
the optimal interval time was 10 min, 8 min, 3 min and 2 min for
mixtures No. 1–4, respectively. The deformation of 20 layers were
0.19%, 0.14%, 0.20% and 0.09%, respectively. It should be noted that
the buildability in this paper is only evaluated from the perspective
of deformation, and the bonding strength of neighboring layers
will be published in future paper.

The loading deformation testing results of different mixtures at

different intervals are shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the
deformation value gradually decreased with the increase of inter-
val time. As expected, mixture No. 1 showed the largest deforma-
tion value, and the deformation values of mixture No. 4 were much
less than that of mixtures No. 2 and No. 3. This means that the
addition of attapulgite and the replacement of Portland cement
by SAC reduced the deformation significantly. On the one side,
the addition of attapulgite increases the thixotropic performance
3.4. Penetration resistance
Fig. 7(a) and (b) show the development of penetration resis-
tance of mortar mixtures over time from 15 min to 60 min and
from 1 h to 10 h, respectively. The initial and final setting times
correspond to the time when penetration resistance values are
3.5 MPa and 28 MPa, respectively. It can be seen from Fig. 7(a) that
at early ages, the penetration resistance increased approximately

3.0 2.5
collapse 0.5min collapse 0.5min
2.5 1min 1min
4min 2.0 2min
Deformation value (mm)

Deformation value (mm)

6min 4min
2.0 8min 1.5 6min
10min 8min
1.5
1.0
1.0
0.5
0.5

0.0 0.0

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Layers Layers

(a) No.1 (b) No.2

1.6
0.6
1.4
0.5
Deformation value (mm)

1.2 0.5min
Deformation value (mm)

0.5min
1min 0.4
1.0 1min
2min
2min
0.8 3min 0.3 3min
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.1
0.2
0.0 0.0

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Layers Layers

(c) No.3 (d) No.4

Fig. 6. The loading deformation testing results.
6 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600

1200
No.1 35
No.2
Penetration Resistance (kPa)

Penetration Resistance (kPa)

1000 No.3 30
No.4
25 No.1
800
No.2
20 No.3
600 No.4
15
400
10

200 5

0
0
10 20 30 40 50 60 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Time (min) Time (h)
(a) (b)
Fig. 7. Penetration resistance of mortars with different mixes.

linearly with time, which is in agreement with [6]. The growth flowability as that of mixture No. 1. The addition of HRWR prolongs
trend of penetration resistance is similar to the increasing rate of the hydration induction period. This is consistent with the experi-
static yield stress. The addition of attapulgite slightly increased mental conclusions [35,36]. Firstly, the molecules of HRWR adsorbed
the growth rate of penetration resistance within 1 h. However, on cement particles hinder water and ions from diffusing smoothly
with the elapsed resting time higher than 2 h, the increasing trend at the interface between cement minerals and pore solution. Sec-
of penetration resistance showed an opposite behavior. This can be ondly, the chelation effect formed by Ca2+ and COO restrains the
explained by the different contribution factors to structural build- nucleation and precipitation of hydrate products [36]. After about
up. At early ages, thixotropy plays a leading contribution in struc- 22 h, the retarding effect of HRWR was diminished, and the cumula-
tural build-up. However, hydration plays a major role in later stage tive released heat of mixture No. 2 exceeded that of mixture No. 1.
[14]. The addition of attapulgite increased the static yield stress The addition of SAC significantly promoted the cement hydration
and reduced the heat hydration (which will be discussed in next at early age, even with retarding agent and HRWR. However, the
Section), and therefore the mixture showed the abovementioned hydration of cement at later age was weakened.
behavior. From Fig. 7, it can be seen that the replacement of Port-
land cement by SAC obviously shortened the initial and final set-
3.6. Methods to evaluate the buildability
ting times due to the formation of Aft [34], and thus increased
the penetration resistance and its growth rate significantly. It can
In this study, the buildability was evaluated by the maximum
also be seen that the mixture with SAC and attapulgite (No. 4)
deformation of 20 printing layers. The deformation of 20 layers
had the highest growth rate of penetration resistance.
was measured by the deformation monitoring device. By conduct-
ing a large number of tests, it was found that 0.2% deformation can
3.5. Calorimetric curve be acceptable visually. Thus, 0.2% deformation was arbitrarily
taken as the critical value, and when the deformation is smaller
The calorimetric curves of different cement pastes are given in (or larger) than 0.2%, the buildability is acceptable (or not
Fig. 8. It can be observed that the addition of attapulgite retarded acceptable).
the early hydration reaction significantly. This is because that Take the printing time of 1 min and layer thickness of 30 mm
HRWR was added into mixture No. 2 to maintain the same for example, the deformation is calculated based on the loading

0.005 140
0.04 No.1 25 No.1
No.2
Cumulative heat evolution (J/g)

120 No.2
Cumulative heat evolution (J/g)
Heat of hydration release (w/g)
Heat of hydration release (w/g)

20
0.004 0.03
No.3 15 No.3
0.02
No.4 100 No.4
10

0.003
0.01 80 5

0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

0.002 0.00
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
60 Time (h)

Time (h)

40
0.001
20
0.000
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (h) Time (h)

(a) (b)
Fig. 8. (a) Heat of hydration release and (b) Cumulative heat evolution.
 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600 7

Table 4
The deformation of 20 layers at interval time of 1 min.

Mixes Theoretical height (mm) Deformation value (mm) Real height (mm) Error (%)
No.1 600 12.91 587.09 2.15
No.2 600 7.20 592.80 1.20
No.3 600 3.73 596.27 0.62
No.4 600 1.44 598.56 0.24

Growth rate of penetration resistance (Pa/min)

20000 24000
No.1 1min
No.1 2min
16000 No.1 4min
No.1 6min
18000
No.1 8min
12000
Stress (Pa)

12000
8000

4000 6000

0
10 20 30 40 50 60 0
Time (min) 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Growth rate of yield stress (Pa/min)
Fig. 9. Loading stress curve of No. 1 under various intervals.
Fig. 10. The relationship between growth rates of penetration resistance and yield
stress.

deformation test results. Based on the deformation test results, the

printing process can be simulated, and thus the deformation value
and optimal interval time could be estimated from this method. It
is worth to note that the interval time of 0.5 min was not selected
due to the appearance of collapse. Since the thickness of each layer
was 30 mm, the actual height of 20 layers was compared with the
theoretical height, as shown in Table 4. It can be seen that the over-
all deformation of the structure was quite large even if no collapse
occurs at a low growth rate of yield stress. In other words, the max-
imum error for these four mixes was 2.15% (No. 1), which was
nearly 9 times greater than the minimum error (0.24% for No. 4).
According to the above study, the possible solutions to reduce
the deformation are: (1) increase the printing interval time; (2)
decrease the printing thickness; (3) increase the growth rate of
yield stress of mortars.
The loading stress acting on the bottom layer can be calculated
by the ratio of mass of the upper layers (mortar specimen and
sand) to the area of bottom layer. The curve of loading stress acting
on the bottom layer vs. printing interval time can be estimated, as
shown in Fig. 9. Printing interval time determines the loading rate.
The shorter printing interval time is, the faster the loading rate. The
growth rate of loading stress significantly decreased with the inter-
val time increasing from 1 min to 4 min, and it only slightly
decreased with interval time increasing from 4 min to 8 min. The
results indicated that the loading stress was correlated to the
printing layers and interval time, and the loading stress linearly
increased with the printing time.
The growth rates of loading stress, static yield stress and pene-
tration resistance of mortars are summarized in Table 5. According
to [6], the growth rate of yield stress might have a close relation
with growth rate of penetration resistance. The points of growth
rate of penetration resistance versus growth rate of static yield
stress are presented in Fig. 10. It can be seen that there was a per-
fect linear relationship between growth rate of penetration resis-
tance and growth rate of static yield stress, and the growth rate
of penetration resistance was 40 times higher that of growth rate
of static yield stress.
In Section 3.3, we obtained that the optimal interval time
were 10 min, 8 min, 3 min and 2 min for these four mixtures,
respectively. It can be seen from the loading deformation curve
of mixture No. 4 at interval time of 2 min (Fig. 6(d)) that there
was only a slight distortion in the first loading (only 0.09%),
and then it remained unchanged. The This indicates that the
optimal printing interval time should be lower than 2 min. In
this case, the optimal interval time of 1.5 min was selected
and the slope of loading stress was the average value of that
at 1 min and 2 min. Therefore, the loading stress growth rates
for these four mixtures were 44.2, 56.4, 146.9 and 302.3 Pa/
min, respectively. The corresponding growth rate of yield stress
were 69.3, 75.3, 248.6 and 510.2 Pa/min, respectively. Obviously,
the ratio of growth rate of yield stress to loading rate was higher
than 1. In the determination of s0,0, due to the number of

Table 5
The increasing rates of loading stress, static yield stress and penetration resistance of mixtures.

Mixes The slope of loading stress (Pa/min) Growth rate of yield stress Growth rate of penetration resistance
1 min 2 min 3 min 4 min 5 min 6 min 8 min 10 min
No. 1 (d0 = 31.87 mm) 442.3 221.1 – 110.6 – 73.7 55.3 44.2 69.3 2453
No. 2 (d0 = 31.23 mm) 451.3 225.7 – 112.8 – 75.2 56.4 – 75.3 2618
No. 3 (d0 = 31.98 mm) 440.7 220.4 146.9 110.2 88.1 – – – 248.6 8830
No. 4 (d0 = 31.09 mm) 453.4 226.7 151.1 113.3 – – – – 510.2 20,170
8 Q. Yuan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 227 (2019) 116600

Table 6 4. Conclusions
The value of dimensionless yield stress (k).

Mixes s0,0 (Pa) tint (min) k The buildability of fresh 3D printing mortar was evaluated from
No. 1 266 10 1.45 the perspective of deformation during printing process in this
No. 2 588 8 1.80 paper. The following conclusions can be obtained:
No. 3 325 3 1.62
No. 4 549 1.5 1.99
(1) The buildability is closely related with structural build-up of
cement-based materials, printing thickness and printing
interval time.
(2) Both physical and chemical effects contribute to the struc-
Growth rate of penetration resistance (Pa/min)

24000 tural build-up of mortar. The physical effect is achieved by

adding attapulgite. It was proved that attapulgite cannot
accelerate the hydration of cement, but increase its struc-
18000
tural build-up rate. The chemical effect is achieved by add-
ing SAC, which can significantly increase the hydration and
structural build-up rate of mortar. The combination of atta-
pulgite and SAC is the most effective way to increase the
12000 structural build-up rate of cement-based materials.
(3) The deformation value and optimal interval time could be
obtained by simulating the printing process using the load-
6000 ing deformation device proposed in this study. The relation
between growth rate of yield stress and printing interval
time can be described by Eq. (2), and when the dimension-
less yield stress is about 2, the compression deformation is
0 acceptable.
0 2 4 6 8 10
(4) Growth of penetration resistance had a linear relation with
Time (min)
the growth of static yield stress, thus, penetration resistance
Fig. 11. The relationship between Growth rate of penetration resistance and can be used to characterize the structural build-up of
optimal interval time. cement-based materials.

measured points was limited, the s0,0 was negative after linearly Declaration of Competing Interest
fitted. Thus, the dynamic yield stress was used as the initial
stress, which was close to that of Le et al. [2]. Since the s0,0 fit The authors declare no conflict of interest.
value is negative, it may be more appropriate to use an expo-
nential model throughout the static yield stress growth process. Acknowledgements
However, more experimental data are needed for fitting. In the
course of this experiment, the testing time is limited, and it is Financial supports by National Key R&D Program of China (con-
convenient to use straight line fitting in a short time scale. The tract No. 2017YFB0310100) and National Natural Science Founda-
detailed values of dimensionless yield stress are shown in tion of China (contract No. 51778629) are greatly appreciated.
Table 6. It can be seen that the dimensionless yield stress was
about 2 when the compression deformation of the printing com- References
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