Big Area Additive Manufacturing for Buildings

Abstract

Developments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) has enabled an acceleration of new technology into the marketplace and can revolutionize the way products are designed and built. In January 2015, ORNL demonstrated how additive manufacturing can be used to drive rapid innovation in vehicles and has now applied BAAM in building envelopes. In partnership with Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM), an innovative building design was developed to incorporate low cost vacuum insulated panels into a three-dimensional (3-D) printed 20’ x 13’ x 10’ structure. These panels utilize a new vacuum insulation technology, called modified atmosphere insulation (MAI), which has been shown to achieve the same performance but at significantly reduced cost than traditional vacuum insulation. The radically new approach to integrating new technologies, such as vacuum panels, into building enclosure design and final assembly is described in this paper. This paper also details the design process and the final 3-D printed design.