U-type steel wire mesh for the flexural performance enhancement of 3D printed concrete: A novel reinforcing approach.

Effective reinforcing method is of great significance to the 3D concrete printing (3DCP) technology for structural application. Currently available reinforcing measures for 3DCP only provide directional instead of integral reinforcement for 3D printed constructs. To this gap, in this study, a novel reinforcing approach for 3DCP via U-type steel wire mesh (USWM) is proposed, which facilitate integrated horizontal and vertical reinforcements. Printed specimens without reinforcement, with flat steel wire mesh (FSWM) and USWM are manufactured to demonstrate the structural superiority of the currently proposed strengthening approach through flexural tests. The results show that the flexural performance of 3D printed specimens is substantially improved due to introduction of USWM, as indicated by significantly higher load-bearing capacity and deflection hardening compared to the counterparts reinforced with FSWM and plain specimen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]