The BioMatters team at the University of Michigan has developed a fully biodegradable, reusable and recyclable material to replace the wasteful concrete formwork traditionally used across the construction industry. The base of this material is upcycled sawdust—millions of tons of sawdust waste are created each year from the 15 billion cut trees and often burned or dumped in landfills left to contribute to environmental pollution.
The BioMatters team at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and Digital Architecture Research & Technology (DART) Laboratory is making productive use of this readily available resource. Currently, they are using sawdust created at the Fabrication Laboratory at Taubman. “We have made a recyclable, all natural biomaterial which is made out of sawdust. Other sawdust-based solutions are using other petroleum-based polymers—we use biopolymers which are completely decomposable,” said Muhammad Dayyem Khan, researcher at the DART laboratory. “And the biggest thing is it’s very easy to recycle and reuse.”
Led by DART director Mania Aghaei Meibodi, along with researchers Tharanesh Varadharajan, Zachary Keller and Khan, the team proposes a novel method that couples robotic 3D printing of the wood-based material with incremental set-on-demand concrete casting to create zero-waste freeform concrete structures. The 3D-printed wood formwork shapes the concrete during casting, and the concrete stabilizes the wood to prevent deformation. Once the concrete cures, the formwork is removed and fully recycled by grinding and rehydrating the material with water, resulting in a nearly zero-waste formwork solution.