Engineers print glass bricks for building structures

Engineers 3D print sturdy glass bricks for building structures

MIT engineers 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.

“Glass is a highly recyclable material,” says Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “We’re taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the end of a structure’s life, can be disassembled and reassembled into a new structure, or can be stuck back into the printer and turned into a completely different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material.”

“Glass as a structural material kind of breaks people’s brains a little bit,” says Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student and researcher in both MIT’s Media Lab and Lincoln Laboratory, who is also founder and director of Evenline. “We’re showing this is an opportunity to push the limits of what’s been done in architecture.”

Link to the MIT news item

Caption: Each glass brick manufacturing method is shown from left to right: FH (Fully Hollow), PC (Print-Cast), and FP (Fully Printed). Credits: Image: Ethan Townsend