Cornell Pioneers Underwater 3D Printing for Ocean Infrastructure: A DARPA-Funded Revolution

Global - Ekhbary News Agency

Cornell Pioneers Underwater 3D Printing for Ocean Infrastructure: A DARPA-Funded Revolution

In a development poised to fundamentally transform marine engineering and underwater construction, researchers at Cornell University have unveiled a groundbreaking 3D printing technology capable of building and repairing structures directly on the ocean floor. This pioneering effort, significantly bolstered by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), marks a substantial leap toward making subsea construction faster, more cost-effective, safer, and environmentally sustainable.

Traditional methods of underwater construction and repair have long been plagued by formidable challenges. These include prohibitively high costs, labor-intensive and slow processes, significant risks to human divers, and often detrimental impacts on fragile marine ecosystems. The Cornell team, spearheaded by Sriramya Nair, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the David A. Duffield College of Engineering, is actively addressing these long-standing obstacles by integrating advanced robotic 3D printing with an innovative concrete formulation that predominantly utilizes seafloor sediment.

One of the most critical hurdles in underwater 3D printing has been the phenomenon of "washout," where cementitious materials tend to dissipate into the surrounding water rather than binding effectively to themselves or their intended location. The Cornell research team has successfully circumvented this challenge by achieving an experimentally optimized balance between material viscosity and pumpability. This delicate equilibrium is crucial for ensuring the concrete mix maintains its structural integrity and precision during the printing process in the demanding aquatic environment.

Furthermore, DARPA introduced a specific and ambitious requirement for the project: the concrete mix had to incorporate seafloor sediment as a major ingredient. This stipulation was not merely a logistical consideration, reducing the need to transport materials from the surface, but also a profound environmental objective. By repurposing readily available local materials, the project significantly minimizes its carbon footprint and ecological impact, drastically cutting down on the costs and complexities associated with deploying conventional building materials to remote offshore sites.

To address the inherent low-visibility conditions prevalent in deep ocean environments, the researchers have also dedicated considerable effort to developing sophisticated new sensing systems. These advanced systems enable precise monitoring and real-time adaptation of the underwater 3D printing process, ensuring accuracy and efficiency even in the most challenging scenarios. This builds upon the team's prior extensive experience with large-scale terrestrial 3D printing of concrete structures, utilizing a 6,000-pound industrial robot.

The genesis of this project traces back to the Cornell team's recognition of DARPA's call for proposals, which sought innovative 3D printing concrete construction technologies for subsea applications. Despite their existing focus on large-scale concrete structures on land, they seized the opportunity to explore the potential of their technology in the marine realm. This strategic pivot proved fruitful, leading to a substantial $1.4 million grant, contingent upon meeting specific benchmarks, and yielding highly promising early subsea results.

This achievement represents more than just a technological advancement; it holds the promise of revolutionizing multiple industries, from the construction of offshore wind farms and oil and gas platforms to the urgent repair of marine infrastructure damaged by natural disasters or corrosion. Accelerating and de-risking these operations could significantly boost the global blue economy while simultaneously safeguarding vital marine ecosystems.

While the initial results are highly encouraging, this solution is not yet the definitive "winning" answer for subsea construction. The Cornell team is set to pitch and demonstrate their seafloor 3D printer-driven construction technology in a highly anticipated DARPA ‘bake-off’ scheduled for March this year. At this competitive event, they will race against five other teams to 3D print an underwater arch precisely to specified technical requirements. This competition will serve as a crucial test of the technology's performance under real-world, competitive conditions.

In conclusion, the Cornell group's comprehensive efforts appear to have successfully addressed the core objectives of the project. This suggests that the slow, expensive, and environmentally disruptive traditional methods of underwater construction may soon become a relic of the past, paving the way for a more efficient, sustainable, and technologically advanced future in subsea engineering.

Ekhbary News Agency