A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Cornell University is making significant progress in a bid to successfully 3D print concrete underwater, in response to a project call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued in the fall of 2024. The challenge was for proposals to meet a deadline to design 3D printable concrete that can be deposited at depths of several meters underwater within a year.
The Cornell team, led by Assistant Professor Sriramya Nair at Cornell’s Duffield School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was awarded a $1.4m grant – contingent on benchmarks – in May 2025, and is up against five other teams.
The key requirement from DARPA was that the concrete be made primarily from seafloor sediment, with only a small amount of cement added in order to minimize the final solution’s shipping logistics. In September, the Cornell team performed a successful demo for visiting DARPA officials, which showed how close they were to achieving the specified sediment levels.
Manufacturing on Demand
The challenge is significant: cement particles fail to bind underwater, which causes washout, and countering this with the addition of admixture chemicals increases viscosity to a level that makes pumping the solution extremely difficult, if not impossible.
The work is pioneering in the field. “Nobody is doing this right now,” explained Nair. “Nobody takes seafloor sediment and prints with it. This is opening up a lot of opportunities for reimagining what concrete could look like.”
Nair’s team draws on a wide range of specialized expertise due to the complexities of the project. Civil engineering, electrical/computer engineering, materials science, architecture, and robotics skillsets from Cornell, University of Michigan, Clarkson University and University of Arizona are all on board.
The final demonstration takes place in March, when competing teams will be required to 3D print an arch underwater to see if their solutions are viable for real-world maritime deployment.
You might also like:
Construction-grade structural beams 3D printed by MIT team using recycled plastic: The team’s design is for a 3D printed floor truss system, but load-bearing tests performed as part of their research indicate the system could be applied to the mass production of low-cost structures.
* This article is reprinted from 3D Printing Media Network. If you are involved in infringement, please contact us to delete it.
Author: Joseph Caron-Dawe
Leave A Comment