I can’t imagine many people working in the construction industry being too impressed with this project.

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China Is 3D Printing a Massive 590-Foot-Tall Dam… All Without Humans
Tim Newcomb –

If successful, it would become the world’s tallest 3D-printed structure. That would be damn impressive.

A new Chinese dam would become the world’s tallest 3D-printed structure.
Engineers believe they can build the dam within two years while eliminating the need for human laborers at the dam site.

Artificial intelligence will control unmanned machinery to construct the overall structure.
Chinese engineers will take the ideas of a research paper and turn it into the world’s largest 3D-printed project. Within two years, officials behind this project want to fully automate the unmanned construction of a 590-foot-tall dam on the Tibetan Plateau to build the Yangqu hydropower plant—completely with robots.

The paper, published last month in the Journal of Tsinghua University (Science and Technology), laid out the plans for the dam, as first reported in the South China Morning Post. Researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing explain the backbone of automation for the planned Yellow River dam that will eventually offer nearly five billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. (It’s worth noting that China’s Three Gorges Dam—a hydroelectric gravity dam spanning the Yangtze River, pictured above—is the world’s largest power station in terms of energy output.)

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But it’s hard to tell what’s more ambitious: the fact that the researchers plan to turn a dam site into effectively a massive 3D-printing project, or that through every step of the process the project eliminates human workers as they go fully robotic.

In the dam- “printing” process, machinery will deliver construction materials to the worksite—the exact location needed, eliminating human error, they say—and then unmanned bulldozers, pavers, and rollers will form the dam layer by layer. Sensors on the rollers will keep the artificial intelligence (AI) system informed about the firmness and stability of each of the 3D-printed layers until it reaches 590 feet in height, about the same height as the Shasta Dam in California and shorter than the Hoover Dam’s 726 feet.

With the largest existing 3D-printed structures rising about 20 feet tall—from houses in China to an office building in Dubai—the exploration of 3D-printed projects continues to expand. Already we’ve seen a 1,640-foot-long retention wall in China, housing and office buildings across the globe, and now the U.S. Army has plans for barracks at Fort Bliss in Texas.

Liu Tianyun, the paper’s lead author, says that the central AI system keeps the robotic assembly line humming and the 3D printing on task at the Chinese dam site, while also eliminating human safety concerns and removing human error from the process. This could ensure the efficient delivery of materials and the precision needed to keep each layer of the dam in line and on the level.

With an already expanding array of 3D-printed projects the world over, if China can pull off this feat in two years, led by an AI system controlling a fleet of robots, that may open the future possibilities of AI-controlled 3D-printed construction projects.

And considering the huge labour force available in China it seems odd to push more people into unemployment.

monkey skipper said:

considering the huge labour force available in China it seems odd to push more people into unemployment

we thought they were having a demographic “crisis” and surely better solutions involve increasing individual productivity rather than burning off workers

SCIENCE said:

monkey skipper said:

considering the huge labour force available in China it seems odd to push more people into unemployment

we thought they were having a demographic “crisis” and surely better solutions involve increasing individual productivity rather than burning off workers

How do you “increase productivity” without “burning workers”?

Any form of automation (or any other form of productivity increase) can cause significant problems, but overall and in the long term any replacement of hard and tedious (and often dangerous) work with machines is a good thing.

It just needs to be handled properly.

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

monkey skipper said:

considering the huge labour force available in China it seems odd to push more people into unemployment

we thought they were having a demographic “crisis” and surely better solutions involve increasing individual productivity rather than burning off workers

How do you “increase productivity” without “burning workers”?

Any form of automation (or any other form of productivity increase) can cause significant problems, but overall and in the long term any replacement of hard and tedious (and often dangerous) work with machines is a good thing.

It just needs to be handled properly.

New Tabulators do Work of 100 Men

The Rev Dodgson said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

we thought they were having a demographic “crisis” and surely better solutions involve increasing individual productivity rather than burning off workers

How do you “increase productivity” without “burning workers”?

Any form of automation (or any other form of productivity increase) can cause significant problems, but overall and in the long term any replacement of hard and tedious (and often dangerous) work with machines is a good thing.

It just needs to be handled properly.

New Tabulators do Work of 100 Men

And moreover:
“At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”

from: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/

The Rev Dodgson said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

How do you “increase productivity” without “burning workers”?

Any form of automation (or any other form of productivity increase) can cause significant problems, but overall and in the long term any replacement of hard and tedious (and often dangerous) work with machines is a good thing.

It just needs to be handled properly.

New Tabulators do Work of 100 Men

And moreover:
“At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”

from: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/

we’re going to presume that The Rev Dodgson was writing that like a chapter, in which the question is the one being answered in the immediately following paragraph

A 3-D printed dam does make sense.

By a continual pouring system through a pipe, of concrete that resembles toothpaste in consistency, you can pre-set the pouring path to minimise the residual stresses caused by heating and setting, and minimise path deviation caused by slump.

Just be damn careful where you put the reinforcement.

An advantage is that you could do it (fingers crossed) without any formwork. That would save a huge amount of time.

I wonder, just wonder, would it be possible to pump the reinforcement through the pipe at the same time as the concrete. In much the same way as you would extend a rod mechanically in a welder, centred perhaps by plastic extensions like in a pipe-cleaner. That would keep the reinforcement large, continuous and evenly spaced without the need for reinforcement ties.

There would be less physical danger to construction workers.

Yes, I like the idea.

anyway we think we worked out the other fella’s disagreement, to us burning off means consuming “fuel” such that it cannot be used again, but ‘e probably interpreted it as hurting their employment prospects

of course simply replace employment with education and you have a better stronger communister workforce

mollwollfumble said:

A 3-D printed dam does make sense.

By a continual pouring system through a pipe, of concrete that resembles toothpaste in consistency, you can pre-set the pouring path to minimise the residual stresses caused by heating and setting, and minimise path deviation caused by slump.

Just be damn careful where you put the reinforcement.

An advantage is that you could do it (fingers crossed) without any formwork. That would save a huge amount of time.

I wonder, just wonder, would it be possible to pump the reinforcement through the pipe at the same time as the concrete. In much the same way as you would extend a rod mechanically in a welder, centred perhaps by plastic extensions like in a pipe-cleaner. That would keep the reinforcement large, continuous and evenly spaced without the need for reinforcement ties.

There would be less physical danger to construction workers.

Yes, I like the idea.

Yes it makes sense, which is why people have been building concrete dams like that for 100 years or so.