Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, has developed a system for “printing out” buildings that may help to create a city on the moon sometime this century.
Khoshnevis has now received $100,000 in funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to adapt his “contour crafting” system for lunar construction.
Khoshnevis and collaborators will be designing such items as lunar roads, landing pads and aprons, shade walls, dust barriers, thermal and micrometeorite protection shields and dust-free platforms.
Contour crafting works according to the same principles as an ink-jet printer. Instead of jets squirting ink onto paper, in contour crafting sophisticated nozzle arrays deposit specially formulated concrete-like materials to build large, three-dimensional structures one layer at a time.
The current prototype is 13 feet high, 17 feet wide and 20 feet long, and incorporates 20 patents in its molding nozzle and other components.
Khoshnevis has been working on contour crafting for more than a decade, with support from private sources and government agencies.
His creation was selected in 2006 as one of the top 25 best inventions from more than 4,000 candidate inventions by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the History Channel’s Modern Marvels program.
Khoshnevis hopes that contour crafting can revolutionize construction on Earth, reducing waste, saving time, eliminating construction-related deaths and accelerating the replacement of housing and other buildings after natural disasters.
Contour crafting uses a computer-controlled crane or gantry to build edifices rapidly and efficiently without manual labor. It was originally conceived as a method to construct molds for industrial parts. Khoshnevis decided to adapt the technology for rapid home construction as a way to rebuild after natural disasters, like the devastating earthquakes that plague Iran.
Using a quick-setting, concrete-like material, contour crafting forms the house’s walls layer by layer until topped off by floors and ceilings set in place by the crane. The system calls for the insertion of structural components, plumbing, wiring, utilities, and even consumer devices like audiovisual systems as the layers are built.
Khoshnevis claims that his system could build a complete home in a single day, and its electrically powered crane would produce very little construction material waste.
The Science Channel’s Discoveries This Week program reports that, given 3-to-7 tons of material waste and the exhaust fumes from construction vehicles during standard home construction, contour crafting could significantly reduce environmental impact.
NASA is looking for a way to get a lunar base up and running swiftly and safely.
Khoshnevis received his BS degree in industrial engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1974, then moved to the United States where he received his MS in 1975 and PhD in 1979 in industrial engineering and management from Oklahoma State University.
