How to build (and rebuild) with glass:
[...] For their new study, Becker, Stern, and coauthors Daniel Massimino, SM '24, and Charlotte Folinus '20, SM '22, of MIT and Ethan Townsend at Evenline used a glass printer that pairs with a furnace to melt crushed glass bottles into a material that can be deposited in layered patterns. They printed prototype bricks using soda-lime glass that is typically used in a glassblowing studio. Two round pegs made of a different material, similar to the studs on a Lego brick, are incorporated into each one so they can interlock. Another material placed between the bricks prevents scratches or cracks but can be removed if a structure is to be dismantled and recycled. The prototypes' figure-eight shape allows assembly into curved walls, though recycled bricks could also be remelted in the printer and formed into new shapes. The group is looking into whether more of the interlocking feature could be made from printed glass too.
The team printed glass bricks and tested their mechanical strength in an industrial hydraulic press that squeezed the bricks until they began to fracture. The researchers found that the strongest bricks were able to hold up to pressures that are comparable to what concrete blocks can withstand. Those strongest bricks were made mostly from printed glass, with a separately manufactured interlocking feature attached to the bottom of the brick. These results suggest that most of a masonry brick could be made from printed glass, with an interlocking feature that could be printed, cast, or separately manufactured from a different material. "Glass is a complicated material to work with," said Becker. "The interlocking elements, made from a different material, showed the most promise at this stage." The group is looking into whether more of a brick's interlocking feature could be made from printed glass, but doesn't see this as a dealbreaker in moving forward to scale up the design. To demonstrate glass masonry's potential, they constructed a curved wall of interlocking glass bricks. Next, they aim to build progressively bigger, self-supporting glass structures. "We have more understanding of what the material's limits are, and how to scale," said Stern. "We're thinking of stepping stones to buildings, and want to start with something like a pavilion – a temporary structure that humans can interact with, and that you could then reconfigure into a second design. And you could imagine that these blocks could go through a lot of lives."
MIT spinoff 3D prints architectural glass bricks
According to MIT, engineers, motivated by circular construction's eco potential, are developing a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D printed, recycled glass. Using a custom 3D glass printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks – each in the shape of a figure eight, that are designed to interlock, much like LEGO bricks.
In mechanical testing, a single glass brick withstood pressures similar to that of a concrete block. As a structural demonstration, the researchers constructed a wall of interlocking glass bricks. They envision that 3D printable glass masonry could be reused many times over as recyclable bricks for building facades and internal walls.
"Glass is a highly recyclable material," said Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "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. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material."
"Glass as a structural material kind of breaks people's brains a little bit," said Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student and researcher in both MIT's Media Lab and Lincoln Laboratory, who is also the Founder and Director of Evenline. "We're showing this is an opportunity to push the limits of what's been done in architecture."
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Thursday December 26, @07:03PM (2 children)
This is just more of the old "It's [blah blah blah] but with COMPUTERS!]", except now it's 3D printing. I wonder, will it sell better with AI???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 28, @03:06AM
Yeah. This seems like a fluff piece/idea and a "research hammer desperately looking for nail". How many bricks can their printer 3D print per day? That's one limit to the eco potential right there. It's like trying to print millions of newspapers with an office printer.
Also if you're building stuff to mainly unbuild them later, you're usually wasting lots of time and energy.
In the real world if you're going for a construction material with ecopotential, try wood. Wood takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. The longer your building is around, the longer the CO2 is out of the atmosphere.
As for temporary buildings, I bet bamboo will be lighter than their glass and easier to transport. Heck in many cases it could be more scientifically[1] eco friendly to landfill the unwanted bamboo for carbon sequestration and build the next temporary building out of new bamboo - save on transportation, time, QA, etc.
Steel frame + fabric buildings would also be another good option for short term temp stuff.
[1] Eco-friendly based on science, not feelings or "religious" style stuff.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 28, @04:45PM
I pity you. Read a book! Or if you're trying for a "funny" mod, well, you're no Red Skelton.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday December 26, @07:52PM
There is prior art in building with vitreous materials: Engineering Brick [wikipedia.org]
The foundations of the Empire State Building are built with Accrington Brick [wikipedia.org].
The interlocking material is mortar [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, @02:03AM (2 children)
I would be leery if designing glass things around people. Some of us can be quite intentionally destructive.
There are numerous tales around where I live of vandals taking to destruction of glass things ( store windows, automobile glass ) that I fear to think of it as a structural support item, rather than a replaceable expendable.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday December 27, @05:59AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 28, @04:53PM
This glass isn't window glass, it's bricks made of glass. Glass bricks would possibly less breakable than the ceramic bricks used since antiquity.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Friday December 27, @10:45AM (4 children)
If they can manage to print load bearing structures, they could print hollow bricks in a vacuum and have the best heat insulating building material ever.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday December 27, @11:00AM
I would imagine that a hollow glass cube would not have the same structural strength to support a weight from above. It might still be viable for smaller buildings but only testing (and perhaps mathematics) would reveal that.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, @02:28PM (2 children)
Here is one product,
https://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/let-there-be-light-aerogel-filled-glass-bricks-provide-translucency-as-well-as-insulation-and-loadbearing-capabilities/ [ceramics.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Friday December 27, @06:00PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, it's not (yet) a product. The insulation is excellent. Current vacuum insulation panels have 70mW/m*K at slightly above 20mm thickness, the presented block has 50mW/m*K at 135 mm. While that is still worse a lot than vacuum per mm thickness, the load bearing abilities of 45 MPa are well within the range of regular bricks, so the overall insulation&load results are in the same class as high-grade rebar concrete plus vacuum panel.
If it appeared on the market at a somewhat competitive price, it'd be an instant hit. I fear however that if they'd start with looking at maximum profit, they'd end up around 250€/m^2, priced way out of the market for "ordinary" building.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Saturday December 28, @01:36PM
Mistake in my above post: the mW/m*K values are for the material as such, not the specific building block with a given thickness. It's originally W*m^2/m*K, where the power on an area is conducted over a length through a temperature gradient. Sorry.
That makes the claim for the new found aerogel even better, close to vacuum, although "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wärmeleitfähigkeit" (*) gives aerogels at a about factor 3 worse than vacuum, close to PUR. Still, any aerogel filled building blocks would be among the best insulation possible, especially if not flammable (vs PUR) and usable for critical outside walls.
(*) can't URL that, it escapes the 'ä' letters.