Sustainability principles in 3D concrete printing: Analysing trends, classifying strategies, and future directions

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in 3D concrete printing (3DCP); however, its sustainability challenges, particularly regarding environmental concerns, require close attention. To mitigate sustainability-related problems of technology, new realm of research has emerged: sustainable 3DCP. However, this field currently lacks a classification framework for sustainability practices and approaches. To fill this gap, current study aims to classify strategies in 3DCP to enhance environmental sustainability and offer recommendations for further research. To achieve this goal, first, a bibliometric analysis, a computer-aided statistical method for reviewing the literature, is employed. This analysis will explore, measure, and map existing research to identify current trends and the state-of-the-art in the field. Subsequently, a thematic analysis of the keywords categorises prior sustainability strategies. Finally, benchmarking concrete technology offers some recommendations for mitigating sustainability concerns and assessing the benefits of applied strategies. The results show that research in the realm of sustainable 3DCP began in 2017 and has a significant growth rate of 1.5 times per year. Besides, strategies to improve the sustainability performance of 3DCP pursue four main targets: reducing carbon footprint and raw material consumption, increasing durability characteristics, and enhancing thermal performance.