Industry 4.0 for Steel Construction: an Outlook: Fid-Bau Portal

Industry 4.0 for Steel Construction: an Outlook

Tankova, Trayana / Pires, J. Norberto / da Silva, Luís Simões

In the era of internet and robots, sophisticated devices and real‐time simulation, the construction sector remains highly dependent on manual labor which is also the main source of delays, lack of quality, and human injuries. The rapid development in technological areas such as mechatronics, computers, sensors, programming, human interfaces and artificial intelligence (AI) – offers huge potential for modern applications.

Nowadays, additive manufacturing is rapidly growing, and it could offer efficient solutions for steel construction since it can be executed in any shape and scale. There are a few solutions in additive manufacturing technologies, which can process materials and produce components. However, there is a gap in the market for capacity to link the processed material conditions and characteristics to the production parameters in real‐time. Real‐time and cognitive re‐planning of the process parameters becomes significantly important when components with large‐scale and complex shapes are considered.

This paper presents a summary of existing technologies for automatic construction process, it identifies the critical issues which hamper the adoption of new technologies in construction and describes an additive manufacturing solution currently being implemented.