Megaproject: 3D printing of a dam for a hydroelectric power plant
Chinese engineers are planning to launch the world’s largest 3D printing project. In two years, it is planned to fully automate the unmanned construction of a 180-meter-high dam on the Tibetan Plateau to launch a hydroelectric power plant — it will be completely carried out with the help of robots.
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An article published last outlines plans for the construction of the dam. The hydroelectric power plant will generate almost five billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
But it’s hard to say which is more ambitious: the fact that the researchers are planning to turn the dam site into a large-scale 3D printing project, or that at every stage of the process the project excludes labor, since they are planned to be fully robotic.
In the process of “printing” the dam, construction materials will be delivered to the work site, and then unmanned bulldozers, asphalt pavers and rollers will form the dam layer by layer. The sensors will inform the artificial intelligence (AI) system about the strength and stability of each of the layers printed on a 3D printer until the dam reaches 180 meters in height.
Taking into account the fact that the largest existing structures printed on a 3D printer reach a height of about 10 meters — for example, an office building in Dubai — the number of projects printed on a 3D printer continues to increase. A 500-meter-long protective wall has already been built in China, residential and office buildings around the world, and the US Army is planning to build barracks at Fort Bliss in Texas.
Liu Tianyun, the main author of the article, says that the use of artificial intelligence will ensure the smooth operation of the robotic assembly line and 3D printing on the dam, will ensure security at the facility and eliminate errors related to the human factor in the process.
Given the growing number of 3D printing projects around the world, if China can complete this megaproject in two years, it could open up future opportunities for similar AI-driven construction.
