Dive Brief:
- As 3D printing gains more traction in construction and academia, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created 3D-printed glass bricks that have a crush strength comparable to that of concrete blocks, the university announced in a Sept. 20 news release.
- For this study, the engineering team used the Glass 3D Printer 3, the latest offering from Rochester, New York-based 3D-printed glass firm Evenline, paired with a furnace that melts crushed glass bottles into a molten, printable material.
- The printer then deposits the molten glass in layered patterns in the shape of a figure eight, according to the release. The team added two round pegs onto each printed brick, which enable the materials to interlock — similar to LEGO pieces — and be assembled into larger structures.
Dive Insight:
Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and Michael Stern, a former student and the founder of Evenline, an MIT spinoff, helmed the team.
Becker and Stern’s inspiration for the design arose partly in MIT’s Glass Lab, where the two, then undergraduate students, first learned the art and science of blowing glass, according to the release.
They were also inspired by circular construction principles, which aim to reuse and repurpose a building’s materials whenever possible to limit embodied carbon in the industry.
Construction is one of the world’s worst polluters — the buildings and construction segment accounts for 37% of global emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
“Glass is a highly recyclable material,” Becker said in the release. “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.”
MIT students and researchers have explored innovative construction solutions and methods in the past. Examples include:
- Earlier this year, researchers debuted an artificial intelligence-based model that can teach robots multi-step tasks with higher success rates than comparable training methods.
- In 2022, a team employed 3D scans to repurpose wood scraps and reclaim the throwaway pieces as new building components.
- In 2018, an MIT class designed a mass timber structure — an 82,000-square-foot prototype community building — called the Longhouse, that it submitted for presentation at that year’s Maine Mass Timber Conference.
Stern said the latest foray into glass bricks could eventually be employed in building design.
“Glass as a structural material kind of breaks people’s brains a little bit,” said Stern in the release. “We’re showing this is an opportunity to push the limits of what’s been done in architecture.”