In the 3DWoodWind project, three-dimensional
winding processes are being developed for material-efficient hollow profile
lightweight components made of wood. Winding processes are known from fibre
composite technology for highly stressable lightweight components for aviation.
These fibre-based processes work predominantly with synthetic composite
materials made of carbon or glass fibres. For the construction industry, these
additive processes are very promising and resource-efficient building
processes, which, however, are still hardly used in timber construction despite
the very high level of digitalisation and technical development. Currently used
wood filaments, for example, consist of a mixture of thermoplastic and ground
wood, which means that the long fibres of naturally grown wood are no longer
present and, as a result, the inherent material properties of wood such as
anisotropy and structural resilience are lost. 3DWoodWind uses a continuous
strip of thin veneer strips as the application material. Its natural fibres are
intact, continuous and tensile. In the project, high-performance hollow profile
lightweight components are to be developed. It is planned to develop a
robot-assisted manufacturing process based on the DFG large-scale facility
"Research Facility for Robotic Architectural Production" RAP-Lab. This
production process is intended to create components by robotically applying and
winding veneer strips, such as rectangular as well as free-form supports or
beams. Due to their high performance, these hollow lightweight components could
serve as substitutes for concrete or steel components in the future.