MIT engineers have developed a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D-printed, recycled glass.

" What if construction materials could be put together and taken apart as easily as LEGO bricks? Such reconfigurable masonry would be disassembled at the end of a building’s lifetime and reassembled into a new structure, in a sustainable cycle that could supply generations of buildings using the same physical building blocks.

That’s the idea behind circular construction, which aims to reuse and repurpose a building’s materials whenever possible, to minimize the manufacturing of new materials and reduce the construction industry’s “embodied carbon,” which refers to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every process throughout a building’s construction, from manufacturing to demolition.

Now MIT engineers, motivated by circular construction’s eco potential, are developing a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D-printed, recycled glass. Using a custom 3D glass printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks, each in the shape of a figure eight, that are designed to interlock, much like LEGO bricks.

In mechanical testing, a single glass brick withstood pressures similar to that of a concrete block. As a structural demonstration, the researchers constructed a wall of interlocking glass bricks. They envision that 3D-printable glass masonry could be reused many times over as recyclable bricks for building facades and internal walls...."

For the MIT News, please see: https://news.mit.edu/2024/engineers-3d-print-sturdy-glass-bricks-building-structures-0920, last accessed on September 21st, 2024.