From 21 to 23 September, Camille Zoude had the opportunity to take part in Shaping 10, held in Padua, Italy, and organised by the European Ceramic Society and ICERS Ceramica Italiana. She presented the progress of the 3DFormworks project, with a focus on the development of refractory inks for 3D printing.
At this conference, which brought together more than 200 participants, she presented a poster entitled “Development of low carbon 3D printed permanent formworks for complex refractory precast components”. The presentation led to many interesting discussions with researchers and scientists from the ceramics field.
It was a great opportunity to share our work with a wider audience, discuss our approaches and meet new contacts from a range of fields.
View the posterAme Saleh Ali,(Student Member, IEEE), Othman Lakhal, Abdelkader Belarouci, and Rochdi Merzouki, (Senior Member, IEEE)
Three-dimensional concrete printing (3DCP) is advancing construction automation through automated layer-by-layer deposition of cementitious materials, eliminating formwork and enabling complex geometries previously unachievable by conventional methods. Maintaining consistent geometrical quality, particularly filament width, layer height, and cross-sectional area, remains the primary barrier to reliable large-scale deployment. Current systems achieve mean absolute errors of 1.10% for filament width, 3.72% for layer height, and 3.58% for cross-sectional area under controlled conditions. However, filament width deviations escalate to 39.4% under extreme temperatures (below 20 ◦C or above 30 ◦C), compared to 25.8% under optimal conditions. This paper presents a systematic review of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) for real-time geometrical quality control in 3DCP, synthesizing findings from 207 publications spanning 2015 to June 2026. Twelve representative studies are analyzed across six dimensions: material monitoring, geometric sensing, control logic, environmental compensation, CPS integration level, and deployment conditions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) models achieve up to 92% accuracy in printing-speed prediction and 90% in defect classification, while digital twin frameworks reduce geometric errors by 25%. Adaptive nozzlevelocity compensation reduces defects by 11.1%. Despite these advances, all systems operate at partial CPS integration (Level 3 of 5) and remain predominantly reactive rather than predictive. Critical gaps include: (i) fragmented sensing architectures lacking multimodal fusion; (ii) absence of standardized benchmarks; (iii) limited defect prediction strategies; and (iv) insufficient environmental parameter integration. Future priorities include AI-driven digital twins, recurrent neural network-based forecasting, multimodal sensor fusion, physics-informed reinforcement learning environments, and unified CPS frameworks validated in outdoor scenarios.
L. Bétrémieux, D. Bulteel, S.Abdelouhab, S. Rémond
This study describes research on the reactivity of mineral additions in binary mortar formulations, with a view to formulating a low-carbon ternary mortar for 3D concrete printing. Interest in this new construction technique stems from the more economical, environmentally friendly and, above all, tailor-made solutions it offers. Various formulations were tested to study the partial replacement of the Portland cement contained in cementitious inks with mineral additions such as fly ash, blast furnace slag and metakaolin. Mechanical strength tests and physico-chemical analyses were used to study the reactivity of the mineral additions, with the aim of ultimately optimising the performance of a 3D-printable mortar. This article aims to establish correlations between the type of hydrates formed and the strength development of the inks.
