Emerging Architectural Potentials of Tunable Materiality through Additive Fabrication Technologies
Summary The research that has been already conducted in the field of functionally graded materials can provide useful methodologies for the description and configuration of material distribution that can be assessed for a transfer to three-dimensionally graded materials. The different composition systems borrowed from other disciplines like metallurgy41 are investigated for their transferability for use in additive fabrication. The experiment chapter will come back to this issue in the description of the modelling process and identify related tectonic systems that have been studied from 2D functionally graded materials. Several methods are available today to create gradient materials with additive fabrication, yet contemporary research in this area seeking an application to produce fully functional components is scarce. It is estimated that this will change as more robust additive manufacturing materials become available, a greater variety of multi-material printing systems that integrate voxel-based approaches are developed, and the process for support-structure removal is refined. From the tests described one can envision architectural consequences that would influence the relationship between the individual and the material in different aspects of perception, use and interaction. The materials created are not only more closely related to the individual necessities of the human physiognomy and locomotion, but also establish a new formal tectonics with increasing biomimetic functionalities. Additive fabrication also sees growing application, in the field of medical implant creation especially, mostly for the creation of biodegradable periodic scaffolding structures that allow controlled tissue growth. Very recent research by Pompea et al. (2003) and Hollister (2005) investigates composite structures with additively fabricated components that operate with FGM properties. These processes can be rewarding for a later investigation of bio-mimetic approaches, and interpretations of these technologies might be helpful in their projection for a future architectural practice that can implement materials with structural hierarchy.
4.2.6 Performance-oriented material distribution The following text will review research on digital processes for the creation of graded mechanical performance through calibration of an artefact’s multi-material sub-components. These techniques can bridge the existing fabrication technologies with a novel goal-oriented design approach that would allow the composition of tailored material compositions. Research in this area is still in its infancy as regards formal complexity and material differentiation and will see probable advancements in regard to speed, material diversity and calibration of fully graded materials. In 2000 Bhashyam, Shin and Debashish proposed a first integrated CAD system that would allow interactive and intuitive calibration of material heterogeneity and the three-dimensional visualisation of such. This review introduces three design methodologies that are specifically geared towards the additive fabrication of heterogeneous materials and a process that has been used for the calibration of functionally graded materials in two dimensions. The approaches are structured according to a methodological separation by Bhashyam, Shin and
An historical definition of metallurgy initially described the science as followed: “Metallurgy, at the present understood, is the art of extracting metals from their ores and adapting them to the various purposes of manufacture.” (Percy 1861, 1-2) A contemporary reading of the term focuses on the impact of the materials’ microstructures for the definition of its mechanical performance and the respective manufacturing processes that alter these properties. For a good overview on the definition and the principles of metallic microstructures, see: Abbaschian, Abbaschian and Reed-Hill (1994, 2009). 105 41