Development of a consistent digital process chain from an adaptable modular bridge design to intelligent additive manufacturing utilising cyber-physical systems

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Thanks to steady advances in computer-aided design and additive manufacturing, it is already possible today to describe and segment a range of complex structures and to manufacture them with high-performance concretes under a high degree of automation. Beyond the current, exploratory applications of these techniques, it must be possible in the foreseeable future for bridge construction to benefit from the ever-increasing flexibility and performance of these technologies. Current approaches to serial construction, however, are limited in design to predominantly conservative construction ideas and fabrication techniques and do not take full advantage of the expanded design freedom. This is largely due to the fact that the high planning effort required for this is carried out manually or is automated only in individual, unrelated sub-steps. A largely untapped potential for meeting this challenge lies in designing the entire process chain in a digitally continuous manner so that a cross-scale link is achieved from the design of the bridge system to segmentation and robot-assisted manufacturing. This significantly reduces the costs for detailing and necessary adjustments and provides the basis for being able to react dynamically to critical manufacturing and test data in order to adjust the parts of the design that have not yet been manufactured. A close coupling of the design processes with quality controlled and managed production is realised by the consistent application of cyber-physical systems (CPS).