Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Review

Intelligent design and manufacturing of ultra-high performance concrete

(UHPC) – A review
Dingqiang Fan a, b, Jinyun Zhu a, Mengxin Fan a, Jian-Xin Lu b, *, S.H. Chu d, Enlai Dong a,
Rui Yu a, c, *
a
State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
b
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering & Research Centre for Resources Engineering towards Carbon Neutrality, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hong Kong, China
c
Wuhan University of Technology Advanced Engineering Technology Research Institute of Zhongshan City, China
d
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The quick rise of intelligent technologies promotes the development of the construction industry into a new
UHPC phase. As an advanced cement-based materials, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) breaks the performance
Intelligent design upper limit of traditional concrete materials, which has also been empowered by intelligent techniques. Hence,
Machine learning
this work comprehensively reviews the progress on the intelligent design and manufacturing of UHPC materials.
Intelligent manufacturing
3D printed UHPC
The review mainly includes various design methods and performance characteristics of 3D printed UHPC (3DP-
UHPC). The results reveal that currently, the particle packing methods, especially compressible packing model
(CPM) and modified Andreasen and Andersen (MAA) model, are domain in designing UHPC materials. Mean­
while, the intelligent design methods, referring to optimal design by computer technology, are also increasingly
used due to their high efficiency and accuracy in property predicting. Notably, recently, a new design concept
was proposed by the joint use of particle packing models and machine learning techniques. On the other hand,
the intelligent manufacturing of UHPC mainly refers to3DP-UHPC. Here, the rheology (especially thixotropy) and
printability (pumpability, extrudability and buildability) are crucial for the manufacturing of 3DP-UHPC. Adding
steel fibers can enhance the matrix strength, but also will increase the anisotropy of 3DP-UHPC by regulating
fiber orientation. Overall, the intelligent development of UHPC is a significant direction for the construction
industry, attracting increasing interest and attention. The outcomes of this study emphasize the advantages and
significance of using intelligent techniques to design and manufacture UHPC materials, which holds great ref­
erences and support for future construction projects.

1. Introduction
In the history of human civilization, buildings and constructions are
always closely related to human beings, whether as a refuge for rest or a
carrier of various cultures. Today, the building structure is oriented
towards high performance for extending the service of construction
materials and satisfying the required properties in some severe envi­
ronments [1–4]. Thus, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is
developed with excellent mechanical properties (compressive strength
>120 MPa) and durability (e.g. ultra-high anti-chloride penetration
ability) [5–7]. Typical UHPC materials are composed of large contents of
cement (800–1200 kg/m3), supplementary cementitious materials
(SCMs), fine sand, steel fibers and superplasticizer, with an ultra-low
water/binder ratio (0.15–0.25) and dense microstructure [8–13].
Owning to its outstanding performance, UHPC is regarded as one of the
most suitable materials for complex modern constructions, like long-
span bridge [14,15], slab structure [16], thin-shell structure [17], nu­
clear power containments [18], marine engineering [19,20], etc.
Therefore, it is meaningful to study UHPC materials to create more
durable and sustainable infrastructure and drive technological ad­
vancements in the construction industry.
Since the concept of UHPC was proposed in 1994 by Larrard et al.
[21], research on it has gained increasing attention, and now the
development of UHPC has a hot topic in the field of civil engineering.

* Corresponding authors at: State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China (R. Yu).
E-mail addresses: jianxin.lu@polyu.edu.hk (J.-X. Lu), r.yu@whut.edu.cn (R. Yu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2023.131495
Received 22 February 2023; Received in revised form 15 March 2023; Accepted 18 April 2023
Available online 25 April 2023
0950-0618/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Fan et al.
For illustration, the trend of publications from Scopus on the topic of
UHPC is analyzed, as presented in Fig. 1. It is obvious that from 1994 to
2021, the publications of UHPC topic increased exponentially and
showed a continuous upward trend. By further analyzing, it could be
noticed that as basic research topics, the materials design and
manufacturing of UHPC were attracting much attention. Materials
design refers to optimizing proportions of various ingredients to meet
the requirements of engineering, which is the basic to produce UHPC
materials [22–24]. Therefore, there has been some research on the
composition design of UHPC. For example, Wille et al. [25] reported an
approach to design UHPC product by employing the improved
compressible packing model (CPM). They claimed that using this model
could develop a new UHPC product with compressive strength
exceeding 150 MPa. Wang et al. [26] designed environmentally friendly
UHPC by achieving the maximum wet packing density using novel
Publications
Construction and Building Materials
Cement and Concrete Composites
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Publications
Fig. 1. Publications on the UHPC topic from Scopus.
2
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
approaches, including statistical methods of D-optimal design (DOD)
and response surface method (RSM). Fan et al. [27] created a green
UHPC by utilizing D-optimal design (DOD) statistical method techniques
to achieve the greatest wet packing density. The materials
manufacturing is the preparation process of UHPC products mainly
including casting, forming and curing [28]. It was reported that the fiber
orientation of UHPC could be adjusted by casting parameters (e.g.,
flowing direction and distance, casting length and height, and mixture
viscosity), thereby improving the flexure strength and fiber application
efficiency [29–32]. Hassan et al. studied [33] the effects of curing
temperature (10, 20, 30, and 90 ◦ C) on the UHPC long-term strength,
which showed that the early strengths development was greatly asso­
ciated with curing temperature and curing in 90 ◦ C could effectively
promote the early strength of UHPC materials. Also, some research was
devoted to further improving early age strength of UHPC by adopting
Year
Engineering Structures
Cement and Concrete Research
Year
D. Fan et al.
other curing regimes, like carbonation curing [34,35], and microwave
curing [36,37], etc. Undoubtedly, these fundamental studies promoted
the development and application of UHPC materials. However, the
modern construction sector not only requires higher performance for
materials, but also is oriented towards intelligent development, which
can increase efficiency, safety, sustainability, and technological ad­
vancements in the industry. Although the basic properties of UHPC have
been widely investigated, research on the adoption of intelligent tech­
niques in the production of UHPC is still in its infancy. Therefore, there is
enough motivation to promote the intelligent development of UHPC
materials.
Correspondingly, the basic research for UHPC intelligent develop­
ment includes intelligent materials design and manufacturing (Fig. 2).
Firstly, intelligent design refers to designing UHPC composition by uti­
lizing information or artificial intelligent (AI) techniques. As early as
1990 s, AI techniques have been used for the assistant of concrete
mixture design. For instance, in 1998, Yeh [38] employed artificial
neural networks (ANN) model [39] to predict the concrete strength
accurately based on regression analysis. Recently, Mahjoubi et al. [40]
presented a method to design the low carbon and cost-effective UHPC,
including XGBoost [41], extra trees [42] and adaptive geometry
estimation-based many-objective evolutionary algorithm (AGE-MOEA)
[43]. Emad et al. [44,45] compared the accuracy of predicting concrete
strength by using nonlinear- relationship (NLR), ANN models, M5P-tree
(M5P) and pure quadratic, which revealed that ANN models showed
higher coefficient determination (R2) and lower root mean square error.
In addition, there are also publications on the mixture design of UHPC
Fig. 2. Intelligent design and manufacturing of UHPC.
3
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
using statistic software, such as Design Expert [46–48] and SPSS
[49,50]. Intelligent manufacture is to utilize automated equipment or
machines (e.g., intelligent concrete mixer and 3D concrete printing de­
vices) to mix, cast and cure UHPC materials. Among these automated
manufacturing techniques, 3D concrete printing (3DCP) is studied
popularly. 3DCP is an emerging additive manufacture (AM) technique,
which allows printing successive layers of structures on top of each other
without much labor and any formworks [23,51], and thus has benefits of
significant convenience, flexible architecture design and higher con­
struction efficiency. Hence, the 3DCP technology has been used to
manufacture various concrete materials, like foam concrete [52,53],
geopolymer composites [54], engineered, strain hardening cementitious
composites (ECC/SHCC) [55,56] etc. By combining the advantages of
both 3DCP and UHPC, researchers successfully developed 3D printed
UHPC to realize the advanced digital construction and excellent per­
formance [57–60]. Overall, as can be understood, with the advancement
of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), the intelligent devel­
opment of civil engineering is an inevitable tendency. Therefore, it is
important to facilitate the intelligent development of UHPC.
This work comprehensively reviews the intelligent design and
manufacturing of UHPC materials. Firstly, mixture design methods of
UHPC are reviewed, including traditional design methods, dense parti­
cle packing methods, and computer-aid methods (i.e., statistic methods,
machine learning methods, and machine learning plus particle packing
methods). Then, the intelligent manufacturing of UHPC materials (i.e.,
3D printed UHPC) are reviewed, emphasizing its fresh performance
(workability, rheology and printability) and hardening performance
D. Fan et al.
(fiber orientation, mechanical properties and microstructures). Finally,
the challenges and future perspectives on this topic are summarized.
This review is to highlight recent advances, offer some insights and
recommendations for further research, thereby facilitating the intelli­
gent development of UHPC. This can also contribute to the development
of new, innovative construction materials and practices that can
enhance the sustainability, efficiency, and durability of infrastructure.
2. Intelligent design of UHPC
Mixture design is the process of determining the optimal ingredient
proportions to guarantee the satisfactory fresh and hardened properties
for the construction needs [22–24]. For UHPC, mixture design methods
would elucidate how to select design parameters of ingredients properly
to achieve the required properties, especially mechanical and durability
properties [2,5,24]. Unlike conventional concrete that has specific
guidance of standards, the mixture design of UHPC is generally based on
various methods or theories without uniform standards [2,5,24]. As
shown in Fig. 3, the origin of UHPC can be traced back to the 1970 s
when Bache et al. [61,62] proposed the densified system with ultrafine
particles (DSP) theory to prepare a new concrete material with
compressive strength over 120 MPa, lying the foundation for the future
emergence of UHPC. At this time, researchers and engineers usually
designed the mixture of this new concrete by the traditional empirical
method, which successfully manufactured a variety of concrete prod­
ucts, such as Densit [63], reactive powder concrete (RPC) [64], Ductal
[65], BSI concrete [66], etc. Until the 1990s, De Larrard and Sedran [21]
systematically suggested a particle packing model – solid suspension
model (SSM) - for the optimized design of UHPC (first definition). After
that, many UHPC design methods were proposed based on different
theories or models, including the modified Andreasen and Andersen
(MAA) model [9], response surface method (RSM) [67], D-optimal
design (DOD) method [26], artificial intelligent (AI) technology [68],
etc. Based on these methods, various mixtures of UHPC were designed,
as summarized in Table 1. Overall, the mixture design approaches of
UHPC have changed from the traditional empirical methods to the
advanced methods via computer technology. This part explicitly reviews
the publications involving mixture design methods, especially empha­
sizing the intelligent methods.
2.1. Traditional methods
As known, the traditional method for the mixture design of concrete
Fig. 3. Typical mixture design methods.
4
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
is mainly based on experience of the water consumption and sand rate
[79,80]. This method is divided into three steps: design, trial and
adjustment [79,81], as shown in Fig. 4(a). Which has been employed by
civil engineers for a long time. Similarly, the mixture design of UHPC
also adopted this method (trial-and-error method) at first. For instance,
Wille et al. [25] compared the properties of 50 groups of UHPC mixtures,
and thus determined the optimal value interval of cement, silica fume,
water-binder ratio and other parameters. Arora and Aguayo [82]
determined the proportions of binary, ternary and quaternary blends by
mixing different amounts of alternative materials with OPC. Wu et al.
[69] used empirical method to design the mixture of UHPC and inves­
tigated the behaviors of rheological and mechanical properties of UHPC.
Although this traditional method could design some mixtures of UHPC,
its shortcomings are also obvious. Firstly, based on the experience
without scientific guidance of theory, the mixtures designed by this
method are passable rather than the optimal one [83]. Secondly, as it
usually requires a large amount of testing to verify the feasibility of
designed mixtures, its design cycle is time-consuming and costly
[83,84]. Furthermore, limited by the number of experiments, the
method only involves a single performance (mainly compressive
strength) and lack of design for special performance requirements, such
as durability and packing density [68,79,85]. The traditional mix design
methods are not fully applicable to achieve the optimization of
comprehensive performance of UHPC. Hence, more advanced mixture
design methods are required.
2.2. Dense particle packing methods
To design UHPC more scientifically and rationally, some scholars
proposed to optimize the UHPC mixture by using the dense particle
packing models [9,12,86-88].
To date, there have been various studies focusing on the mixture
design by particle packing models. Among them, the compressible
packing model (CPM) [89] and modified Andreasen and Andersen
(MAA) model [90] are two representative design methods. The CPM was
developed by De Larrard in the 1990s [91], which originated from the
linear packing density model (LPDM) proposed by Stovall et al. [92]. To
be specific, Stovall et al. [92] investigated the loosening and wall effects
between particles of different sizes, as shown in Fig. 5, and thus pro­
posed a discrete model (LPDM) that could be used for concrete
composition design. Later, De Larrard and Sedran [91] come up with the
concept of the compaction coefficient K by considering the effects of the
actual concrete casting process, such as inserting, vibrating, and
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Table 1
Summary of mixtures based on different design theories (kg/m3 or ratio).
Author Design principle C SF Other SCMs A WR W F Compressive strength
(MPa)

Wu et al. [69] Traditional 917 162 – 913 8.6 159 156 120.0
method
Larrard [21] SSM 1080.6 334.2 – 813.2 – 198.2 – 164.9
Arora et al. [70] CPM 1 0.075 0.175 (FA) + 0.075 (MK) + 0.7 (A/ 1.2% 0.168 (W/ 0.01 153.0
0.05 (LP) B) B)
You et al. [71] CPM 4.92 1.23 0.74 (QP) + 0.74 (GP) 5.41 0.33 1 0.99 159.0
Yu et al. [9] MAA 874.9 43.7 – 1273.4 45.9 202.1 2.5 vol 156.0
%
Wang et al. [72] MAA 750 144 200 (FA) 990 30 190 2 vol% 180.0
Li et al. [73] MAA 856.5 214.1 – 1177.5 19.7 184 2 vol% 191
Li et al. [74] MAA 916.1 61.1 244.3 (LP) 808.1 21.1 280.9 2 vol% 144.6
Meng et al. [13] MAA 548 42 535 (GGBS) 998 16.0 167 156 158.0
Fan et al. [12] MAA + DOD 690 170 177 (LP) 1073 40 175 0 134.2
Ghafari et al. RSM 1 0.24 0.3 (QP) 1.3 0.04 0.22 (W/ 1.75 vol 150.0
[46] C) %
Ferdosian et al. RSM 640.2 56.3 361.1 (FA) 1131.2 25.61 167.1 78.7 160.3
[47]
Wang et al. [26] DOD 400 100 400 (LP) 1060 38 141 – 131.9
Ghafari et al. DOD 675 210 167 (QP) 984 31 183 30 164.0
[75]
Fan et al.[27] DOD 490 187 270 (LP) + 200 (SSP) 920 41.8 204 – 131
Fan et al. [76] ML 500 125 400 1060 36 180 156 161
Saleh et al. [77] ML 445 32.5 – 1790 7.5 125 – –
Mahjoubi et al. ML 0.67 (C/ 0.17 (SF/ 0.16 (FA/B) 1(A/B) 0.02 (WR/ 0.15 (W/ 0 –
[40] B) B) B) B)
Fan et al. [68] MAA + ML 656 144 363 (LP) 947 – – – –
Sun et al. [78] MAA + ML 785.3 147.2 49.1 (FA) 1199.6 27.3 186.3 2 vol% 154

(SSM: solid suspension model; CPM: compressible packing model; MAA: modified Andreasen and Andersen model; DOD: D-optimal design method; RSM: responsible
surface method; ML: machine learning; C: cement; SF: silica fume; SCM: supplementary cementitious materials; A: aggregate; WR: water reducer; W: water; F: fiber; FA:
fly ash; MK: metakaolin; LP: limestone powder; B: binder; QP: quartz powder; GP: glass powder; GGBS: ground granulated blast-furnace slag; SSP: steel slag powder.)

Fig. 4. Mixture design processes of UHPC by different methods.

compacting. Subsequently, they established the relationship between

βi
virtual compactness and actual compactness for guiding the concrete PDCPM = ∑i=1 [ ( )] ∑n ( ) (1)
βi
material composition design, which was then named as compressible
1
1− j=1 1 − βi + bij βi 1 − βj
yi − j=i+1 1 − aij βj yj
packing model (CPM) as shown in Eqs. (1)–(4):

5
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

modulus (q) into this function, and then developed a new particle
packing model called Andreasen and Andersen (A&A) model (Eq. (6)).
After that, in 1980 Funk and Dinger [90] systematically analyzed the
A&A model and claimed that in practice, a minimum particle size (Dmin)
must exist for the particle size distribution. Therefore, they modified the
A&A model by incorporating Dmin, and the MAA model (see Eq. (7) and
Fig. 6).
D 0.5
P(D) = ( ) (5)
Dmax

D q
P(D) = ( ) (6)
Dmax

Dq − Dqmin
P(D) = (7)
Dqmax − Dqmin

Fig. 5. Loosening and wall effects between particles.
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
( )1.02̅
dj
ai,j = 1 − 1 − (2)
di
( )1.5
bj,i = 1 − 1−
di
(3)
dj
∑
n n yi/
∑
K= Ki =
β i
(4)
1 1
i=1 i=1 C
− γi
where i is class, βi is the stacking density when they are individually
arranged, aij is the loosening effect coefficient, bji is the wall effect co­
efficient, yi is the particle classes, d is the particle sizes, K is the
compaction index, n is a mixture of granular fractions, C is the real
packing density of the aggregate mixture. After that, scholars considered
other roles of particles inside the concrete materials as well as charac­
teristics, and the CPM model was improved into various models,
including compaction-interaction packing model (CIPM) [93], 3-param­
eter compressible packing model (3PCPM) [94] and 4-parameter
compressible packing model (4PCPM) [95]. With the guidance of
CPM, Arora et al. [70,96] optimized the proportions of cementitious
materials and aggregate composition, which led to the development of
an economic and ecological UHPC material. Similarly, Cao [97] pro­
posed a UHPC mixture design method based on the CPM and the specific
strength method, which also verified the feasibility of using CPM to
design UHPC. Besides, You et al. [71] used the CPM to evaluate the
packing density of UHPC matrix and reduce the cost based on the “trial
and error” experiments. Actually, CPM is a typical discrete model, un­
derlying the assumption that the particles are discrete distribution. In
fact, the particle size distributions of concrete raw materials are
continuous, the application of this model is thus limited [12,26]. To
solve this problem, some researchers made attempts to utilize contin­
uous particle packing model.
The MAA model is a representative continuous particle packing
model [90]. Its origin can be traced back to the ‘Fuller curve’ proposed
in 1907, when Fuller and Thompson [98] established an optimal target
equation (Eq. (5)) to guide the design of concrete by adjusting the
proportions of aggregates. Later, Andreasen and Andersen [99] explored
the Fuller curve in more depth and concluded that the gradation of
common materials in nature was mostly continuous, thus the particle
stacking model could also be obtained based on continuous gradation
distribution. Meanwhile, driven by the mathematical theory of ‘particle
packing similarity’, they came up with the concept of distribution
in which D is the particle size, P(D) is the particle proportion with size
less than D, Dmin is the smallest particle size, Dmax is the largest particle
size, q is the distribution modulus. The MAA model was first validated in
the ordinary concrete systems. Brouwers and Radix [100] proposed an
approach for the mix-design of self-compacting concrete by using the
MAA model. Then, Hüsken and Brouwers [101] expanded the applica­
tion of the MAA model by successfully designing dry hard concrete with
dense packing structure through the MAA model. Based on previous
studies, Yu et al. [9] used this model to design UHPC compositions, and
successfully fabricated a new UHPC composite with excellent strength
but relatively lower cement amount. Since then, the MAA model has
been widely used in the field of UHPC, e.g., impact-resistant UHPC [74],
low-shrinkage UHPC [102], strain-hardened UHPC [103], economical
UHPC [13], environmentally friendly UHPC [104] and coarse-aggregate
UHPC [105].
To sum up, these methods originate from mathematical theories,
highlighting the importance of particle packing, which increases the
scientificity and reliability of UHPC mixture design. Due to their high
simplicity, theoretical property and generalizability, they have been
widely used for the design of UHPC [5,9,24,107,108].
2.3. Computer-aided methods
With the positive advances of computer technology, numerous dif­
ficulties in civil engineering could be solved with the assistance of
computers, especially for the mixture design of concrete materials
[24,79,109–112]. The computational design of concrete mixtures refers
to designing concrete mixture with the aid of computer techniques, such
as using computer professional software, computer mathematical
modeling, and computer simulations. It is a mathematical-orientation
rather than experimental-approach. Fig. 4(c) indicates that the
computer-aided optimization of concrete mixtures is beneficial to realize
an optimal design scheme. To be specific, the decision-maker shall make
a decision on the problem definition, the modeling process, and the
optimization algorithm [76,79]. The decision variables, goals, and
constraints of the problem are defined during problem formulation
[113]. In modeling, proper mathematical connections are selected to
mimic each objective as a function of the choice variable [75,79]. An
optimization algorithm is typically chosen based on its appropriateness
to mathematically solve the problem [75,79,114]. This part reviews the
advancement of computer-based methods for the mixture design of
UHPC.
2.3.1. Statistical methods
Statistical methods for designing UHPC proportions refer to the vi­
sual analysis and simulation of each parameter with mathematical op­
erations, and specialized computer analysis software to finally arrive at
the optimal design solution. The main statistical methods for designing
the mixture of UHPC include the response surface method (RSM) [115]
and the D-optimized design (DOD) method [116].

6
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Fig. 6. Cumulative curves determined by the MAA model with different parameters [106].

(1) RSM different algorithms to find the optimal design solution [118]. RSM is
simple to construct and easy to practice, thus they have been extensively
Response surface method (RSM) is to build input and output re­ utilized in many aspects like architectural design, soil curing, and me­
lationships of multi-parameters by using statistical integrated analysis chanical design [115].
techniques combined with experimental analysis [24,46]. The mathe­ It has been proved that using RSM models can not only predict
matical calculations, statistical analysis and simulation, can determine concrete properties, but also design the optimal mixture of concrete to
relationships between independent and dependent variables by fitting meet engineering requirements [24,79,117,119]. A typical flow chart of
functions [117], like Eq. (8). the design steps by RSM model is illustrated in Fig. 7. The optimization
of RSM starts from describing the response surface of the response on the
∑
k ∑
k ∑
k
Y = B0 + Bi Xi + Bii X 2 + Bij Xi Xj + E (8) variables, after which it selects a better response region from the
i i ij response surface, and finally pushes back to the optimization method for
optimal experimental conditions [120,121]. According to different
where Y represents the responses functions, B0 is constant coefficient. Bi , principles on selecting experimental points, RSM methods mainly
Bii and Bij are the coefficients of the linear, quadratic and interactive include central composites design (CCD) and box-Behnken design
terms, respectively. Then the final calculation results are represented by (BBD): central composites design (CCD), box-Behnken design (BBD), one
response surface plots and contour plots, which can be combined with factor design (OFD), miscellaneous method (3-level factorial design).

Fig. 7. Design steps of RSM [119].

7
D. Fan et al.
The RSM has been successfully applied to the design of UHPC materials.
Mosaberpanah et al. [122] evaluated the effects of nano-silica and waste
glass powder on UHPC properties by using RSM (CCD), which demon­
strated the feasibility of using nano-silica and waste glass powder for
fabricating green UHPC products. Ghafari et al. [46] established an RSM
(CCD) model for property prediction of hybrid steel fiber reinforced
UHPC, which designed a UHPC composite with higher flexural strength
but less fiber. Kathirvel and Sreekumaran [123] analyzed the influence
of contents of silica fume, quartz powder, and fiber on 7 and 28
d compressive strength for the development of geopolymer UHPC
composites. In addition, it was verified that the RSM could also be used
to design functional UHPC materials. For example, to develop light­
weight UHPC, Lu et al. [124] proposed to utilize RSM (CCD) to optimize
the proportions of cement, hollow glass microsphere, and expanded
shale grains, which thus fabricated a new UHPC product with superior
strength (>120 MPa) and low density (<1950 kg/m3). Ferdosian and
Camões [47] designed an eco-efficient UHPC by using the RSM (CCD),
which took silica fume, ultra-fine fly ash and sand as main variables
components. Sun et al. [128] analyzed the influence of porous aggregate
carrier on the reduction of autogenous shrinkage and optimized
microstructure of UHPC based on RSM. Ragalwar et al. [103] designed
strain-hardening UHPC by using RSM, considering the effects of multiple
variables including (particle size distribution modulus, type and con­
tents of binder, and W/B) on UHPC matrix properties. Wang et al. [125]
recycled coral sand for the preparation of green UHPC products in virtue
of RSM techniques to determine the optimal coral content. Besides, Yin
et al. [126] established a RSM (BBD) model to optimize the distribution
modulus (q) and proportion of particles at gradation breakpoint (p) of
the MAA model, and thereby developed a multilevel particle packing
model for the mixture design of UHPC materials.
(2) DOD
Some scholars also attempted to use D-optimal design (DOD) method
for designing UHPC. Its basic principle can be understood as adding the
finite function (Eq. (9)) to the basis of RSM method, to make the
calculation result more accurate [116].
q
∑ learning (ML) is an advanced AI technology, which is becoming a useful
0 ≤ xi ≤ 1 i = 1, 2, 3⋯, q. xi = 1 (9)
i=1
where xi are variables. More precisely, DOD generates multifactorial
experiments with minimal experimental groups (exemplified by Fig. 8)
and and then the mix design is transformed into a mathematical model
Fig. 8. Experimental groups designed by DOD method [107].
8
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
by determining the relationship between the multiple variables and the
response [127]. This computer-aided method includes the optimal
subset of all possible experimental results. Then, the optimal solution
can be obtained through selecting criteria and determining the number
of designing runs [26]. A typical treatment of DOD is presented in Fig. 9.
By virtue of the principle of DOD method, Fan et al. [107] established
a cubic polynomial function to study the impacts of hybrid fibers on
UHPC packing structure, which was then used to optimize steel fiber
contents (Fig. 10(c)). Similarly, Wang et al. [26] adopted DOD method
to precisely design UHPC composition towards higher wet packing
density, especially including the roles of liquid phases (Fig. 11). In
addition, Ghafari et al. [75] used DOD for the development of eco-
efficient UHPC materials towards multi-objective optimization. Firstly,
they established DOD based functions to predict the compressive
strength and workability of concrete material, whose analysis of vari­
ance (ANOVA) results showed a high adequacy. Then, a numerical
optimization technique known as the global desirability function (Eq.
(10) was used to create a UHPC mixture with a compressive strength
greater than 150 MPa yet with relatively little cement [128]. Also, Fan
et al. [27] designed a green UHPC with steel slag using DOD model,
which achieved high usage of steel slag (200 kg/m3) and multi-objective
optimization (i.e., maximized steel slag powder content, maximized
workability, minimized voids ratio and maximized compressive
strength).
[ ]∑1
∑1 ∏
n ri
D = (d1r1 × d2r2 × d3r3 × ⋯ × dnrn ) ri = diri (10)
i=1
where di (0 to 1) represents individual desirable function, ri (1 to 5) is
the relative importance of di , n refers to response number.
2.3.2. Machine learning based methods
Although statistical methods can be utilized to obtain clear mathe­
matical equations that relate each variable to the mix design, such
equations are sometimes difficult to describe the rather complicated
relationships. Therefore, a more intelligent method (i.e. artificial intel­
ligent (AI) technology) is needed to design the UHPC mixtures. Machine
tool in the field of concrete industry [129–131]. In contrast to the
aforementioned traditional statistical methods, ML methods do not rely
upon explicit equations; instead, ML models are learning algorithms that
find patterns in a training data to predict future values [129]. Different
from the above-mentioned statistical methods, ML methods do not
depend on specific equations. Instead, ML models are learning algo­
rithms which could seek out complicated patterns in the training dataset
to assist researchers in predicting possible values [5,7,132,133]. These
characteristics make it more difficult to establish the link between
mixtures and properties. As a result, it could be understood that there
exist significant merits to use ML techniques in the mixture design of
UHPC materials. Therefore, to comprehensively understand the mixture
design of UHPC, this part emphatically reviews the publications
involving mixture design methods using ML techniques.
As one of the most representative ML algorithms, artificial neural
network (ANN) can be applied to train the dataset and assess the rela­
tionship between the multiple inputs and outputs based on the learning
function similar to the human neural network [134]. This method has
shown great advantage for predicting the properties in the concrete field
[79]. In the property modeling, In the performance modeling, Kas­
perkiewicz et al. originally utilized ANN to establish the compressive
strength prediction model for high performance concrete materials
[135]. Nowadays, researchers have applied ANN methods to cope with
the problems in the studies of cement-based materials. To be specific, the
ANNs have been utilized to predict different properties, such as me­
chanical strength, flowability, filling capacity, and segregation
[136–138]. ANN was also utilized to develop various concrete products,
D. Fan et al.
Fig. 9. Typical analytical process of DOD method [26].
Fig. 10. Compressive strength of UHPC designed by the DOD method [107].
including ready mix concrete [139], structural lightweight concrete
[140,141], UHPC [49,142,143], high strength concrete [144], self-
consolidating concrete [145,146], recycled aggregate concrete
[147,148], etc.
Due to its obvious advantages, ANN has been used in the field of
UHPC, not only for property prediction but also optimized mixture
design. Ghafari et al. [149] used back-propagation ANN to model the
input (mixtures) and output parameters (compressive strength and
workability) of UHPC under two different curing conditions. The
learning algorithm for the model was designed with 53 different mix­
tures in order to train the neural network, and Fig. 12 depicts the typical
structure of a multilayer perceptron neural network with back propa­
gation, input layer, hidden layer, and output layer. Subsequently, using
9
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
these available test data, the neural network model was trained and
tested. From the experimental results, it is concluded that the proposed
ANN model could be taken as an instrumental tool for the strength and
workability prediction, thus could be utilized for the mixture design of
UHPC. Fan et al. [76] proposed a strategy for the mixture design of green
UHPC materials using genetic algorithm based artificial neural network
(GA-ANN) [150,151], as illustrated in Fig. 13. Firstly, D-optimal design
(DOD) and GA-ANN were established for the prediction of UHPC per­
formance. Then, the accuracy of these two models were compared,
which revealed that the GA-ANN could effectively simulate and analyze
the relationship between the complete composition and wet packing.
Finally, the genetic algorithm optimization method [152] was employed
to design UHPC mixture toward highest wet packing density, and after
5000 evolutions, the optimized mixture of UHPC was determined, as
shown in Fig. 14. Besides, Sadrossadat et al. [153] proposed to use
integrating ML algorithms and for the property prediction and mixture
design of steel fiber reinforced UHPC composites. The procedure of this
method included four stages, as illustrated in Fig. 15. Exactly, firstly,
both ANN [134] and Gaussian process regression (GPR) [154] based
prediction models were established, which exhibited excellent accuracy.
Then, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method [155,156], was
employed for the multi-objective optimization including compressive
strength and production cost. The results of this study showed that the
approach not only reduced the cost and improved the properties of
targeted UHPC, but also obtained the best solution when designers are
faced with a strength-fluidity-cost conflict. Similarly, Tian et al. [157]
also utilized AI techniques for designing UHPC materials towards multi-
objective optimization. Moreover, Chen et al. [158] suggested using
genetic algorithm BP neural network (GA-BPNN) for the mixture design
of UHPC. The proposed procedure of mixture design could be summa­
rized as follows: i) creating a GA-BPNN prediction model based on ob­
tained training dataset; ii) according to the boundaries of ingredients,
determining the initial mixture of UHPC; iii) inputting the initial
mixture for the property prediction by the developed GA-BPNN model;
iv) underlying the predicted results, redesigning the initial UHPC
mixture until it met the requirements of engineering.
As mentioned, there have been some studies verifying the feasibility
of the ML in the mixture design of UHPC materials, including a variety of
intelligent algorithms to realize this target, e.g., ANN and GA-ANN. It is
worth mentioning that compared with traditional design methods, these
methods could not only design mixtures efficiently, but also contribute
to the reduction of design costs, contributing to the development of
UHPC.
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Fig. 11. UHPC packing density modelling by the DOD method [26].

Fig. 12. Algorithm structure of ANN model [149].

2.3.3. Machine learning plus particle packing model

As aforementioned above, the particle packing theories and AI
technologies have their own advantages. The AI techniques can be used
to design UHPC mixtures, while the dense particle packing structure is
essential to guarantee the excellent strength and durability of UHPC
[9,24]. Hence, Fan et al. [68] proposed to design UHPC composites
precisely by jointly using particle packing model and AI techniques.
More explicit design process is showed in Fig. 16:

(1) Preparation of ingredients: the appropriate ingredients were cho­

sen with measuring their particle size.
(2) Preliminary design: the basic parameters of MAA model were
firstly determined, after which the up and down dosages of in­
gredients were set; then the preliminary mixture was designed by
the MAA based software.
(3) Further design: the properties of the preliminary mixture were
predicted; the properties of the mixture were evaluated if they
met the design requirements and objectives; if no, the mixture
would be re-design by step (2) until it met the aims.
(4) Fabrication of UHPC: the UHPC materials were fabricated finally.
Similarly, Sun et al. [78] also proposed a mixture design method of
UHPC by combining ML techniques and the MAA model. Firstly, they
compared predicting accuracy of various ML algorithms (i.e., BP-ANN,
GA-ANN and SVM), which revealed that SVM had higher accuracy in
predicting UHPC strength. Then, the MAA model was employed to
initially design of proportions of raw materials. Next, the strength of the
Fig. 13. Mixture design process of green UHPC based on GA-ANN method [76].
(For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
designed mixtures was predicted by the established SVM model. Finally,
the one with the most excellent compressive strength was taken as the
final mixture. Besides, to verify the feasibility of this method, a design
example was carried out. The obtained findings demonstrated the
viability and superiority of applying AI technology in the field of UHPC,
presenting that AI technology could not only predict concrete perfor­
mance but also improve the mix design by fusing particle packing
theory.

10
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

0.835
Objective Function
0.830

0.825

Packing density
0.820
The optimal solution is appeared and determined
when the epoches is 3164 and 5000 separately.
0.815

0.810

0.805

0.800

0.795
1 10 100 1000 10000
Epoches

Fig. 14. Optimization process of genetic algorithm (left) and the optimization result (right) [76].

Fig. 15. Main stages of the proposed design method [153].

2.4. Summary manufacturing commonly focuses on 3D concrete printing (3DCP)

In general, the mixture design methods of UHPC are mainly divided
into three stages (as summarized in Table 2): the first stage is the
traditional design method; the second stage is the evolution of the par­
ticle packing models; the third phase comes to the methods based on
computer algorithms. understandably, the mixture design of UHPC is a
basic and vital part in this field, and thus there have been a variety of
methods. However, it also should be noted that all these methods have
their inherent advantages or disadvantages (Table 2), and thus choosing
a suitable method is more important for scholars and engineers. The
intelligent development in the field of UHPC is an emerging area, it is
motivated to combine the benefits of intelligent techniques for the
mixture design of UHPC materials.
3. Intelligent manufacturing of UHPC
UHPC intelligent manufacturing mainly refers to the casting of
structures with the aid of digital technology, namely digital
manufacturing [159–162]. Currently, the research on intelligent
technology [163–165], which has been an increasingly hot topic in
recent years [164]. 3D concrete printing, also known as concrete addi­
tive manufacture (AM) or digital concrete, is a rapid prototyping tech­
nology based on 3D building models. It is a new manufacturing process
based on the basic principle of ‘layered manufacturing, layer by layer
superposition’ [163,166,167]. It adopts computer and numerical control
technology to assist design and control the mechanical device to com­
plete the automatic construction process according to the specified path
[57,168–170], as shown in Fig. 17 [57]. 3DCP can improve the quality
and speed of construction, eliminate the need for formwork, reduce the
associated labor and save time and cost, which makes it exhibit profound
application values in the modern constructions [170,171]. 3DCP is also
imaginative for UHPC due to its ultra-high compressive strength and
durability, and this material is called 3D printable ultra-high perfor­
mance concrete (3DP-UHPC) [172]. However, owing to the complexity
of UHPC, including low water/binder ration, the addition of steel fibers,
and so on, research on 3DP-UHPC is still in its infancy as summarized in
Table 3. This section comprehensively reviews the advancement of 3DP-
UHPC, expecting to promote the research and development of 3DP-

11
D. Fan et al.
Fig. 16. Mixture design by jointly using the MAA model and AI technology [68].
UHPC.
3.1. Fresh properties of 3DP-UHPC
The fresh properties of concrete materials refer to their behaviors
and characteristics under the fresh state. For 3DP-UHPC materials, their
key fresh property indexes mainly involve workability [184], rheolog­
ical performance [132] and printability [23]. Different from ordinary
concrete, 3D printable concrete generally requires high yield stress and
viscosity to achieve constructability, as well as certain pumpability and
extrudability [23]. The fresh performance including workability, rheo­
logical properties (viscosity, yield stress and thixotropy) and printability
(pumpability, extrudability and buildability) is reviewed below.
3.1.1. Workability
Workability is a basic feature of concrete materials, which mainly
includes indexes of slump and slump flow [185]. Printable ability of
3DPC is firstly directly associated to its yield stress. According to a
theoretical evaluation of mortar yield stress, the yield stress was strongly
correlated with the slurry workability [186]. It is also demonstrated that
workability is an important index for the success of 3D concrete printing
[187]. Tay et al. [187] investigated the connection between printability
and workability (slump and slump flow), and thus defined the printable
region by the assessment of mortar workability (a slump flow value of
between 150 and 190 mm and a slump between 4 and 8 mm), as shown
in Fig. 18. Ye et al. [188,189] modified rubber powder to prepare a new
ultra-high ductility concrete (UHDC) with fluidity between 144 and 169
mm, which met the requirements of 3D printed concrete. Yu et al. [56]
determined a minimum diffusion diameter of 120 mm for fresh concrete
in order to balance the feasibility of pumping with reasonable shape
retention. Arunothayan et al. [58] studied a kind of UHPC that met the
standards of extrudability, constructability and shape retention ability,
with a fluidity of 144 mm. Sun et al. [182] showed that when steel fiber
12
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
was added, the workability of UHPC concrete mixture was controlled at
(160 ± 40) mm, so the extrudability and construction of the extrusion
nozzle could meet the requirements. Overall, as the fundamental prop­
erty of concrete materials, it is vital to control the workability for
guaranteeing the feasibility of 3D printing.
3.1.2. Rheological properties
Rheology is the deformation and flow of objects under the action of
additional forces [132,190]. Since 3DPC technique requires no form­
work, and produces concrete structures by extruding the fresh mortar or
slurry layer by layer through a nozzle, the rheological properties are
crucial for the 3D printing construction [23,132,191–193]. From the
rheological theories, concrete must have low dynamic yield stress and
plastic viscosity to ensure flow during pumping and extruding, but high
static yield stress and viscosity recovery ability to resist flow after
stacking [194–196]. That is to say, the 3D printable concrete materials
need a high thixotropy that is the source of the difference between static
and dynamic yield stresses [196–199]. For 3DP-UHPC, In order to
enable better control of pumpability, extrudability, and casting in the
first stage, it is also necessary to have a low starting yield strength.
However, due to its low water/binder ratio, UHPC exhibits high vis­
cosity and high yield stress, thus a suitable SP content should be
designed to control rheological properties [132]. Therefore, it is essen­
tial to design a UHPC with adaptive rheology to improve operability,
facilitate blending and machining, and guarantee excellent hardening
performance.
(1) Yield stress and plastic viscosity
3DP-UHPC should have an appropriate yield stress and plastic vis­
cosity. The fresh 3DP-UHPC is subjected to different shear rates and
stresses throughout the printing process. The shear stress increases with
the increase of shear rate. When the shear stress increases to a certain
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Table 2 value, the fluid begins to flow, and the shear stress at this time is called
Comparison of UHPC design methods. the yield stress of the fluid [200,201]. Shear rate increases are accom­
Methods Design Advantages Disadvantages panied by an increase in shear stress. The fluid starts to flow when the
Principles shear stress reaches a specific level, at which point the shear stress is
Traditional method According to The previous The designed referred to as the fluid yield stress. When the critical yield stress (static
the previous research can be mixture may yield stress) is reached, the shear stress decreases with the rise of shear
experience to used for not the optimal; rate. The shear stress and shear rate of the fluid are calculated from Eqs.
design reference to get without the (11) and (12) [201]. The flow curves of different fluids under shear
mixtures by a rough guidance of
‘trial and mixture, and scientific
action are shown in Fig. 19. Shear stress and strain rate have a nonlinear
error’ method. then the usable theory, it takes relationship (that is, the viscosity of the slurry mixture varies with the
mixture can be a large quantity applied shear rate). Therefore, the Bingham linear model [202], which is
determined by of raw materials often employed, is no longer suitable for UHPC slurry mixtures; instead,
experiments. and effort to
shear stress–strain rate data can be fitted with nonlinear models, like the
test.
Dense particle packing Ensure the The particle Based on modified Bingham model [203] and Herschel-Bourkley model [204], as
method denser particle packing density mathematical shown in Table 4.
packing of UHPC matrix theories, it is
structure increases, difficult to F
τ= (11)
through which consider the S
adjusting the contributes to chemical effects
proportions of the reduction of of cementitious V
γ= (12)
raw materials, porosity of materials; the H
and thus UHPC; the performance of
achieve higher design designed in which τ and γ are shear stress and shear rate, H represents the height
strength and efficiency and mixtures cannot
difference between the two layers, V, F and S represent the fluid relative
durability. scientificity are be predicted.
improved. velocity, the force on the plate, and the paste area, respectively.
Computer- Statistical The ingredient The The factors will 3DPC requires a certain yield stress to resist the material deformation
based methods contents and relationship affect each [205]. The study of Huang et al. showed that the yield stress and plastic
methods the properties between mix other, and viscosity of UHPC decreased with the increase of W/B or SP content
of UHPC are and UHPC sometimes the
[206]. Khayat et al. [132] concluded the influence of different compo­
set as variables properties is mathematical
and responses; established by equation sition materials on the rheological properties of UHPC, including
the optimal statistical cannot cementitious materials, sand, chemical admixtures, fibers and internal
proportion are models; the accurately curing agents. Hence, they pointed out that the mixture design of UHPC,
settled confirmatory describe the
should fully consider the impacts of rheology. In addition, in order to
through fitting experiments are corresponding
functions. reduced and situation; control the rheological properties of UHPC for 3D printing, Li et al.
thus save time [207] proposed using bentonite as rheology controller, which revealed
and economic that the increased bentonite (0 wt% to 15.0 wt%) led to increases of
costs. plastic viscosity, dynamic yield stress and static yield stress by roughly
Machine A large The predicting The obtained
1.16, 5.57 and 17.05 times, separately. Recently, Arunothayan et al.
learning experimental accuracy and mixture
based dataset is generalization without the [208] systematically studied the effects of steel fiber and nano-clay on
methods utilized to ability increase, basic guidance rheological characteristics of 3DP-UHPC, with drawing following con­
train the and thus the of particle clusions: i) 3DP-UHPC mixes exhibited pseudo-plastic flow behavior
machine design packing
that was consistent with the Hershel-Buckley model or the power-law
learning efficiency is theories; the
model for the further model training
model; ii) meanwhile, as shear rate increased, the apparent viscosity
UHPC improved. rather relies on values of the mixes dropped, showing shear-thinning properties; iii) the
performance a large dataset. inclusion of nano-clay or steel fibers increased the shear-thinning fea­
prediction, tures, apparent viscosity and the dynamic yield stress of the mixes.
and then the
established
models could (2) Thixotropy
be used to aid
the mixture. Thixotropy is also an important index to measure the rheological
Machine Machine The positive The machine
property of concrete. Thixotropy indicates the change of the micro­
learning learning roles of particle learning model
combined technologies packing and relies on a large
structure response of a fluid under shear or at rest with time
with are combined advantages of dataset; the [196,199,209]. In 3DP-UHPC, high thixotropy allows the material to be
particle with particle machine design process transformed immediately after printing into a rigid continuous filament
packing packing learning is relatively with almost no deformation [210]. The basic principle of thixotropy is to
method theories: technologies complex.
destroy and rebuild the internal flocculent structure of slurry during
firstly, particle are
packing model synchronously flow (see Fig. 20) [211,212]. When cement and water are mixed, hy­
is used for considered, dration reaction takes place to form C-S-H gel. During the flow/shear
preliminarily thereby process, the C-S-H gel formed at the early stage will be partially
design improving the
destroyed, resulting in the destruction of the flocs. The size, quantity and
mixtures, and scientificity and
then ML model efficiency of
strength of flocs change continuously until the destruction rate and
is applied to UHPC mixture reconstruction rate of flocs reach an equilibrium state, that is to say, the
determine the design. size and quantity of flocs in slurry remain relatively stable, at which time
optimal the thixotropy is fully displayed [213]. Generally, static and dynamic
mixture.
yield stresses are used to characterize the thixotropy of slurry. The
relation between dynamic yield stress and static yield stress of the
mixture is shown in Eq. (13) [213]:

13
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Fig. 17. Processing route of 3D printing concrete [57].

Table 3
Composition and mechanical property of 3DP-UHPC.
Author Materials Fiber category, Spreading Compressive Flexural Tensile
length, content diameter/ strength/ strength/ strength/
mm MPa MPa MPa

Ma et al. [173] CSA, clay, HPMC, cement, fly ash, silica fume, sand, water, Steel, 12 mm, 2.5% 129.6 16.3 4.6
SP
Chen et al. [174] Cement, fly ash, HRWR PP, 12 mm, 1–2% 90–95
steel, 32 mm, 2% 122
Arunothayan et al. Cement, silica fume, Steel, 3/6/13 mm, 144 70–156 6–16
[58,175,176] aggregate, slag 0.25%–2.00%
HPMC, retarder
Yang [60] Portland cement, silica fume, fly ash, nano calcium Steel, 6/10 mm, 0/ 78.5–183.55
carbonate, cellulose 1%
Pham et al. [177] GP cement, silica fume, Steel, 3/6 mm, 70–111 6–15
ground slag 0–1%
Ma et al. [178] Cement, silica fume, CSA 200 2.15
Bai et al. [179] Cement, fly ash, silica fume, HPMC Steel, 13, 2.5% 180–200 129.6 16.3 44.6
Game et al. [180] Cement, fly ash, river sand, water, SP, polyethylene, 12, 100–180 80–100
1%
Medicis et al. [181] Cement, silica fume, calcium carbonate, sand, water, SP 100–260 65–146 4.6–15.5
Dong et al. [59] Cement, silica fume, fly ash, sand, nano calcium carbonate, Steel, 6/10, 111–145
cellulose, SP and water
Sun et al. [182] Cement, silica fume, slag, sand, water, SP, defoamer Steel, 16 60–100 117.1–130.6 24.7–61.8
Zhao et al. [183] Cement, silica fume, fly ash, slag, gypsum, water, Steel, 13, 2% 197 149.35 29.78
admixtures

(CSA: sulphoaluminate cement, HPMC: hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose SP: superplasticizer.)

Fig. 18. Printable region of mortar (left) and verification of the region (right) [187].

14
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

constructability of 3DP-UHPC [132,192,207]. For instance, Yang et al.

[217] studied the relationship between the thixotropy of printing mortar
and its printing performance, and the research results showed that when
the thixotropy of mortar was distributed between 900 and 2000 Pa/s,
the printed mortar had better extrudability and constructability. The
thixotropy of concrete can be increased by using high cementitious
materials and introducing supplementary cementitious materials. Some
studies have shown that adding a certain amount of polycarboxylate
ether superplasticizer and nano-clay can increase the dynamic yield
stress and thixotropy of slurry [196,199,218]. Teng et al. [213] showed
that thixotropy could be reduced by using highly efficient water-
reducing agent in UHPC, and further incorporation of welan gum and
nano-clay could enhance thixotropy. Similarly, Du et al. [219] proved
that the increase of nano-clay (0–0.2%) resulted in a significant increase
of thixotropy index from 9.7 Pa/min to 16.4 Pa/min. Besides, Li et al.
[207] reported that the inclusion of bentonite could increase the UHPC
thixotropy, due to its strong water swelling and SP adsorption.

Fig. 19. Flow curves of fluids [201].
Table 4
Relationship between shear stress and shear rate in various flow models.
Model Formula Applicability
Bingham [202] τ = τ0 + ηpl γ It is suitable for fluids of which viscosity does
not change with shear rate (γ). τ0 , τ and ηpl are
plastic viscosity, dynamic yield and shear stress,
separately.
Modified τ = τ0 + It is suitable for the nonlinear relationship
Bingham between τ and γ. When the material is not
ηγ + cγ2
[203] thickened by high shear, it offers a more
comfortable fit than Hershel-Bulkley (n > 2).
Herschel- τ = τ0 + kγn This is also utilized to describe the nonlinear
Bulkley [204] relationship between τ and γ., where n
represents the flow exponent and the shear-
thickened fluid exceeds one, the shear thinning
fluid is less than one.
τs = τ0 + τfloc + Athix• t (13)
where τs and τ0 the static yield stress and the dynamic yield stress, τfloc is
the initial increase of yield stress caused by particles flocculation shortly
after shearing, and Athix is the linear evolution slope of static yield stress.
Meanwhile, the hysteresis loop [214–216] and thixotropic index
[196,209] (as shown in Fig. 21) can also be used to evaluate the thix­
otropy of fresh concrete materials, as well as including UHPC [207].
Suitable thixotropy can ensure good extrudability and
3.1.3. Printability
Printability is the property that the concrete materials under the
fresh state can be continuously and uniformly extruded from the print­
ing nozzle [23,171,188,220,221]. Printability includes three attributes
(as shown in Fig. 22): Pumpability, extrudability and buildability [23].
These three indexes directly reflect whether the 3DP-UHPC structures
could be printed and constructed successfully.
(1) Pumpability
Pumpability means that the printable materials can be delivered via
a pumping system to the printing head under pressure and maintain
their starting qualities for the interval [23,222]. This property usually
depends on various printing pump set characteristics, such as pumping
distance, pumping process, and hose size [23]. Besides, to guarantee
excellent pumpability, low plastic viscosity and proper yield stress are
required [23]. Generally, the viscosity of the slurry should be low during
pumping [223]. Meanwhile, aggregate size and water/binder ratio also
affect pumpability. Mechtcherine et al. [222] found that fine materials
moved towards the pipe wall and formed a lubricating layer, and coarse
aggregates accumulating in the center significantly reduce the pumping
pressure. Roussel [45] claimed that low water/binder ratios induce high
yield stress and viscosity of mortar, requiring higher pumping pressure.
To calculate the pumpability of mixtures, Tay et al. [187] established a
dimensionless metric called the pumpability index. The flow rate in
terms of volume per second was determined by measuring the weight of
the mixture that was moved through the pump for 30 s at a constant
speed of 2890 rpm. The ratio of mixture flow rate to water flow rate was
used to construct the pumpability index. The slump-flow value and the
pumping speed necessary to maintain a desired flow rate were found to
be directly related to the index and inversely proportional to each other.
In addition, it is reported that the sliding pope rheometer can also test

Fig. 20. The microscopic mechanism of thixotropy [211].

15
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Fig. 21. Hysteresis loop method (left) and shear rate decay method (right) [207].

the concrete pumpability by analyzing the correlation between the

concrete pressure at the piston head and fresh matrix flow rate [222].
Other methods like using viscometers, rheometers and tribometers are
also in practice. However, there is little research on the pumpability of
3DP-UHPC materials, which is expected to be studied in the future.

(2) Extrudability

Extrudability is the characteristic of printable materials to be

Fig. 22. Rheological properties of 3D printed concrete [23].
extruded smoothly and continuously from a nozzle [224,225]. The
extrudability could be evaluated by slump flow test or extrusion test (as
shown in Fig. 23) [58,226,227]. In 3D printing process, factors affecting
the extrusion of mortar include extrusion speed and flow rate of mortar.
If the flow rate of extruded mortar is not synchronized with the extrusion
speed, the extruded layer will not be continuous and smooth [228]. Tay

Fig. 23. The extrudability of 3D-printed concrete [58].

16
D. Fan et al.
et al. [187] believed that the optimal extrusion speed and flow rate were
60 mm/s and 23 mL/s, respectively. Ma et al. [229] considered that the
most appropriate extrusion speed and flow rate were 75 mm/s and 90
mL/s, respectively. According to required extrudability, Arunothayan
et al. [58] successfully extruded five consistent single-layer UHPC by
employing a 45◦ -inclined rectangular nozzle of 30 mm × 15 mm, indi­
cating the good extrusion of designed UHPC. They also explored the
roles of nano-clay and steel fibers on the extrudability of 3DP-UHPC,
which revealed that the fresh UHPC materials could be extruded suc­
cessfully after the addition of these two ingredients [208]. Wijffels et al.
[230] investigated the extrudability of glass fiber reinforced concrete
materials, which found that the increase of extrusion speed resulted in a
decline of the quality of printed concrete. Medicis et al. [181] success­
fully prepared 3DP-UHPC materials with appropriate extrudability by
adjusting the SP contents.
(3) Buildability
As for buildability, it refers to the capacity of printable materials to
keep in structures of bonded layers when they are extruded from the
nozzle, and enduring the overburdened weight of the successive layers
accumulated during the printing process [231]. In general, the build­
ability could be assessed by the highest printed layers or height until
structural failure [23,175], as shown in Fig. 24. The buildability of
concrete is one of the most important factors to determine whether
mortar can be printed. Nair et al. [232] showed that the yield stress of
buildability should be 150–400 Pa. Arunothayan et al. [58] used a 30
mm × 15 mm nozzle to extruded 5 single-layer UHPC with a length of
250 mm. In the entire printing process, no blockage and discontinuity
were found, indicating that the developed UHPC material had excellent
printability. Weng et al. [221] used fine aggregate gradation to regulate
the viscosity and shear strength, thus improving the printability of
concrete mixtures. Experimental demonstration under the same set of
printing parameters showed that continuous gradation mixed printing
could print 42 layers without obvious deformation, while uniform
gradation and gap gradation mixed printing did not exceed 36 layers.
Shakor et al. [233] studied the printable performance of glass fiber
reinforced concrete materials at different printing rates, and found that
the width and quality of extruded single concrete tended to decrease
with the increase of printing rates. Ye et al. [189] used a 50 × 10 mm
printing nozzle to print a 19-layer structure with a total height of 190
mm. In order to further enhance the printing height, Arunnothayan et al.
[58] adopted the torsional ascending structure to print a UHPC structure
of 840 mm. Since the first layer bears more loads than the upper layer,
the plasticity of the bottom layer should be increased, that is, the
Fig. 24. The buildability of 3D-printed concrete [175].
17
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
strength of the green billet after extrusion should be increased, which
allows the bottom layer to bear higher loads [171,234,235].
3.2. Hardening properties of 3DP-UHPC
3.2.1. Fiber orientation
Steel fibers are key ingredients in the UHPC system to obviously
enhance the UHPC strength, due to its bridge effects to resist crack
propagation [5,236,237]. Also, it should be noticed that excessive
addition of steel fibers will lead to more disordered fiber orientation and
greater probability of lap (Fig. 25), which is detrimental to the packing
structure, workability and fiber application efficiency in UHPC
[238,239]. As for fibers in the 3DP-UHPC system, the fibers tend to align
in the extrusion direction because of the high shear force and pressure of
the extrusion process, improving the UHPC flexural strength [176,240].
Due to this characteristic, some scholars investigate the fiber orientation
in 3DP-UHPC. Arunothayan et al. [176] explored the fiber orientation
effects of 3DP-UHPC, which depicted that the 3D printing process had
obvious effects on the UHPC fiber orientation. Meanwhile, they pre­
sented that compared with the mold-cast specimens, the printed speci­
mens containing 1% and 2% volume fraction of 6 mm long micro steel
fibers showed better alignment in the printing direction. In addition, the
volume proportion of fibers in the mixture affects how the fibers are
distributed throughout the printed UHPC specimens. Higher fiber vol­
ume percentage increases inter-fiber contact and preferred alignment in
the printing direction. [175]. Similarly, Ye et al. [188] illustrated that
fiber orientation of 3DP-UHDC was related to fiber content, and fiber
orientation was more uniform when fiber content was 1.0%. If the fiber
content was too high, such as more than 1.5%, the forced extrusion
process interfered with fiber alignment in the matrix. It is reported that
the fiber orientation distribution in the 3DP-UHPC also depends on the
size of the nozzle used for extrusion. Smaller nozzle diameters increase
preferential alignment of fibers in the printing direction [176].
3.2.2. Mechanical properties
Mechanical properties are important factors for 3DPC for engineer­
ing application, mainly including compressive strength, flexural
strength, and tensile strength. As shown in Table 3, the compressive
strength of 3DP-UHPC blended with steel fibers is significantly higher
normal concrete, which is usually over 120 MPa. Among them, Bai et al.
[179] prepared a kind of 3DP-UHPC with superior mechanical proper­
ties, whose compressive strength was 129.6 MPa, bending strength was
16.3 MPa and direct tensile strength was 16.3 MPa. Ma et al. [173]
designed 3DP-UHPC by adjusting the ratio of coagulation and floccu­
lation, which successfully fabricated a UHPC composites with
D. Fan et al.
Fig. 25. Fiber dynamic process analysis of the UHPC (the influence of steel fiber content) [238].
compressive strength of 129.6 MPa (2.5 vol% steel fibers). Yang et al.
[60] prepared 3DP-UHPC materials by using nano-calcium carbonate to
facilitate the early hydration, enhance early strength and reduce setting
time, of which the highest compressive strength reached 183.55 MPa. As
for flexural strength of 3DP-UHPC, many studies reported that it is about
16 MPa, as shown in Table 3.
Another special mechanical characteristic of 3DP-UHPC is anisot­
ropy, which refers to the mechanical properties of 3DPC from different
directions (Fig. 26), caused by the interlayer properties [184,241,242].
The mechanical properties of 3DPC are greatly influenced by the
printing direction. The layer-by-layer construction process of 3D print­
ing may form weak interlayer interfaces, resulting in anisotropy of
mechanical properties. Ma et al. [243] suggested an empirical parameter
based on Eq. (14) to evaluate the mechanical-anisotropic feature of
printed concrete structures quantitatively:
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
Iα = (fX − fMC )2 + (fY − fMC )2 + (fZ − fMC )2 /fMC
in which fMC is the mechanical strength of the mold-cast specimen, fX , fY ,
and fZ are strength of 3D printing concrete with different loading di­
rections. Furthermore, Ye et al. [188] modified this equation to Eq. (15),
due to the reason that the anisotropy of the specimen should be prepared
using the same preparation method and specimen type.
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
ID = (fX − fD )2 + (fY − fD )2 + (fZ − fD )2 /fD (15)
where D represents loading direction. For illustration, when loading
following X direction, instance, the mechanical property of printed
specimens subjected to X loading direction is referred to as fX in this
Fig. 26. Aeolotropism of 3D printed concrete.
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
context, and IX is the equivalent anisotropic parameter, when the
loading direction is X. As a typical feature of 3DP-UHPC, there have been
relevant research on this topic. Yang et al. [184] reported that the me­
chanical anisotropy of the specimens was associated with fiber type,
fiber content and preparation method. Meanwhile, the test results
revealed that Anisotropy existed in the compressive elastic modulus,
however the tensile elastic modulus in each direction was not signifi­
cantly different. Arunothayan et al. [175] showed that 3DP-UHPC had
anisotropy and optimal compressive strength and excellent bending
performance along the printing direction. Similarly, Yang et al. [60]
measured anisotropic characteristics of prepared 3DP-UHPC samples, as
shown in Fig. 27. The results given that the largest compressive strength
values were found in the Z-direction, next in the Y-direction, and finally
in the X-direction. In addition, it is reported that following exposures to
800 ◦ C and higher, the anisotropy of 3DP-UHPC strengths seen in the
specimens became negligible [244].
(14)
3.2.3. Microstructures
At present, studies on 3DP-UHPC mainly focus on fresh rheological
performance and mechanical properties, and there are relatively few
studies on its microstructure development. To date, the research on
microstructure of 3DP-UHPC emphasizes the micro-interface in the
concrete matrix. For example, Yang et al. [184] observed the micro­
structure between steel fiber and 3DP-UHPC matrix, which shown that
steel fibers are wrapped around the concrete matrix and provide
bridging to enhance the strength of the matrix. Bai et al. [179] observed
the interface by SEM, as shown in Fig. 28, to explain the failure mech­
anism of 3D-UHPC. After loading failure, the matrix and fiber were
obviously separated at the interface and micro-cracks appeared. The
diameter of fibers that protruded from the matrix did not significantly
decrease. There were matrix material residues on the fiber surface and
pulling end, and the failure mode was fiber pulling failure. In addition to
fiber features, Yang et al. [184] investigated the SEM microtopography
of 3DP-UHPC (see Fig. 29), which presented that i) 3DP-UHPC had
relatively compact microstructure, and the aggregates were tightly
encapsulated by mortar with a dense interfacial transition zone, thereby
reducing structural defects and enhancing the strength of the matrix; ii)
when the cellulose was randomly mixed and distributed in the concrete,
some nano-fiber-like substances are formed in the concrete, thus
contributing to the strength and toughness of the concrete matrix. In
addition, Dong et al. [59] studied the microstructure development
mechanism of 3DP-UHPC after suffering from high temperature, as
presented in Fig. 30. The results revealed that when the temperature was
below 400 ◦ C, the high temperature promoted the volcanic ash reaction
to make the aggregate more dense with the matrix; but when the tem­
perature reached 500 ◦ C, the matrix started to become loose and porous
due to the dehydration and decomposition of Ca(OH)2. Meanwhile, by
analyzing the EDS results, they found that a large amount of calcium
alumina appeared in the concrete matrix when the temperature excee­
ded 500 ◦ C; generally, the formation of calcium alumina required a large
18
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Fig. 27. Mechanical anisotropic characteristics of prepared 3DP-UHPC (a: loading modes; b: compressive strength) [53].

Fig. 28. (a) Matrix of S10; (b) fiber/matrix interface before fracture; (c) fiber/matrix interface after fracture; (d) tip of a single pulled-out fiber [179].

amount of water, and they concluded that the dehydration decomposi­
tion at 400–500 ◦ C provided water for the formation of calcium alumin.
Furthermore, Arunothayan et al. [244] analyzed the microstructure of
3DP-UHPC after subjected to higher temperature (1000℃). They sug­
gested that when 3DP-UHPC samples were exposed to such high tem­
perature, C-S-H gels would completely decompose with generating a
honeycomb paste that was damaged to the microstructure. As can be
understood, the macro performance of 3DP-UHPC is closely associated
with its micro characteristics, therefore, it is meaningful to conduct
more studies on the microstructures of this material, which can lay a
theoretical foundation for further development.

19
D. Fan et al.
Fig. 29. Microstructure of the 3DP-UHPC (a: mortar; b: cellulose in mortar) [184].
3.3. Summary
This section reviews the research status of 3DP-UHPC, and summa­
rizes the printability and mechanical properties of various types of
printable fiber reinforced concrete. UHPC has some benefits for the 3D
concrete printing technology: i) the complex system of cementitious
materials leads UHPC to have relatively higher viscosity compared with
ordinary concrete, which is beneficial to the buildability of 3D printed
structures; ii) the inclusion of fibers, especially steel fibers, obviously
improves the strength and toughness of concrete matrix; iii) the special
printing mode could optimize the fiber orientation of 3DP-UHPC, thus
enhancing the flexural strength of matrix.
In summary, research on 3DP-UHPC is still in the early stages, mainly
related to printability and mechanical properties after hardening. Con­
crete 3D printing technology has the advantages of low labor costs,
formless construction, suitable for various construction sites. This is one
of the potential development directions of the construction industry, and
its combination with UHPC is expected to open a new field for the
construction industry in the future.
4. Challenges and future perspectives
4.1. Intelligent design
To date, there have been various studies on the mixture design of
UHPC, which has made positive progress. However, for designing UHPC
compositions by intelligent technologies, it is still in its infancy with
many challenges:
i) The design ideals and procedures vary a lot between different
scholars or engineers. Because of the different physicochemical
features of raw materials, especially industrial, agricultural and
domestic waste, when producing UHPC materials with similar
mixtures, the properties of the UHPCs are usually different;
ii) The complicated system of UHPC results in an insufficient pre­
dicting accuracy when using some common models or AI
algorithms;
iii) To date, most of the literature focuses on intelligently optimizing
UHPC composition with the target of basic properties (mainly
including workability and compressive strength). As for other
properties, especially micro characteristics, there are rather
limited references.
Intelligent design of UHPC is an important trend, and future studies
on intelligent design of UHPC may explore the following aspects:
20
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
i) New mixture design concepts: Both AI technology and packing
model have their inherent disadvantages, but by cleverly
combining the features of AI technology and packing model,
these disadvantages could be addressed effectively, thereby
realizing precise design of UHPC. Meanwhile, by addressing
different UHPC needs, the integration of two or more mixture
design approaches may take use of each method’s benefits,
leading to a superior UHPC mixture proportion. Besides, most of
studies design mixtures of UHPC by realizing the optimization of
single target (e.g., maximizing compressive strength), which
would not be suitable for the increasingly complex service de­
mands. Hence, towards multi-objective optimization is an
important trend in the future.
ii) Expansion of algorithms: There have been a variety of algorithms
(as summarized in Tables 5 and 6) that could be adopted to design
UHPC materials. Since each algorithm has their characteristics,
there is no best algorithm but the most appropriate algorithm for
designing UHPC, thus it is of importance to select a proper al­
gorithm for respective mixture design. Meanwhile, it is mean­
ingful to combine or modify relevant algorithms for the
application in the UHPC field.
iii) Sustainable development: The high content of cement (generally
800–1200 kg/m3) results in high environmental impact and cost,
which requires the use of more SCMs to reduce environmental
pressure. However, the use of these SCMs increases the
complexity of ingredients, it is motivated to utilize AI techniques
to precisely design the proportions of UHPC system. This is
beneficial to the high-efficiency use of the SCMs and the sus­
tainable development of UHPC.
4.2. Intelligent manufacturing
As an emerging digital manufacturing technology, 3DP-UHPC has
attracted increasing attention, especially in recent years. In the future,
the following topics could be paid more attention.
i) Mixture design: The special rheological requirements of 3DP-
UHPC performance make its mixture design more complex.
However, there is a lack of uniform and advanced design methods
connecting its material composition and performance. Therefore,
systematical study on the design theory of 3DP-UHPC is necessary
to build a relation among material composition, performance and
application in the 3DP-UHPC system.
ii) Regulation of rheological performance: Rheological performance
is closely associated with the printability of 3DP-UHPC, so it is
vital to propose a suitable regulation method. The rheology of
D. Fan et al.
Fig. 30. Micro images of the 3DP-UHPCs subjected to different temperatures [59].
concrete may be adjusted to meet the needs of the printing pro­
cess using green cementitious materials (fly ash, silica fume,
metakaolin), nanomaterials (nano-attapulgite clay, nano-silica),
and chemical additives. Besides, the use of superplasticizer (SP)
in the UHPC significantly affects rheological performance and
increases setting time, it is important to precisely design a specific
SP for 3DP-UHPC system.
iii) Volume stability: The characteristics of UHPC with high cement
content and low water-binder ratio result in large autogenous
shrinkage, which is potential to cause macro and micro-cracks in
engineering structures. Given the durability of 3D-UHPC struc­
tures, further research in this aspect needs to be carried out.
iv) Efficient fiber utilization: Fiber is a necessary ingredient in UHPC
for the enhancement of matrix strength, but in the printing pro­
cess, it will cause a series of challenges: The inclusion of fibers
21
Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495
improves the strength of 3DP-UHPC, but also requires specific
printing equipment with appropriate print heads (diameter,
shape, etc.) to optimize the constructability and pumpability.
Meanwhile, 3D printing can affect the fiber orientation in UHPC,
with the interlayer becoming a potential weak point that may
affect interfacial strength development in 3DP-UHPC. As such,
there is a need to develop strategies to maximize the positive role
of fibers on the 3DP-UHPC system and reduce the potential
negative impacts caused by the increased anisotropy. Addressing
these challenges will require a multi-disciplinary approach,
combining expertise in material science, mechanics, and intelli­
gent manufacturing.
v) Engineering application: The molding characteristics of 3DP-
UHPC make its structural design more special. In the future,
how to integrate materials and structure is also needed.
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

Table 5 modified Andreasen and Andersen (MAA) model have facilitated

Categories and algorithms of machine learning. the creation of densely packed UHPC structures with reduced
Machine learning Category Algorithm porosity. The main shortcomings of these methods are that they
cannot include the effects of cement hydration and predict the
Supervised Regression Linear regression (LR), Nonlinear
learning regression (NLR), Ridge regression (RR) hardening performance of UHPC, which should be further
Neural network Back propagation neural network (BPNN), addressed.
feedforward neural network (FNN), (2) Using computer-aided methods (i.e., statistical software and
convolutional neural networks (CNN), long machine learning (ML) techniques) represents a significant
short-term memory (LSTM), recurrent
neural network (RNN)
advancement in UHPC mixture design. Statistical mixture design
Classification Support vector machine (SVM), gradient enables the optimization of mixtures while quantitatively
descent (GD), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), analyzing their effects on UHPC properties. Meanwhile, ML-
light gradient boosting machine LGBM), based methods involve the creation of predictive models for
Decision trees (DT), naive Bayesian
UHPC properties, which are then utilized in conjunction with
algorithm, logistic regression, random
forest (RF) optimization algorithms or particle packing models to achieve
Ensemble Bagging algorithm, boosting algorithm, optimal mixture designs for single or multi-objective applica­
learning stacking algorithm tions. These innovative approaches have opened up new avenues
Unsupervised Neural network Generative adversarial networks (GAN), for the design and production of UHPC products, highlighting the
learning deep belief networks (DBN), restricted
Boltzmann machine (RBM)
potential for continued progress and refinement in the field.
Cluster K-mean algorithm, Hierarchical clustering (3) The fresh performance is crucial for 3DP-UHPC, with a particular
algorithm, Apriori algorithm, FP-growth focus on rheological properties and printability. 3DP-UHPC re­
algorithm quires suitable rheological properties (low dynamic yield stress
Dimension singular value decomposition (SVD),
and plastic viscosity but high static yield stress and viscosity
reduction Principal component analysis (PCA)
Autoencoder Deep autoencoder (DAE), stacked recover), namely, higher thixotropy. Meanwhile, printability
autoencoder (SAE), convolutional encompasses the ability of fresh concrete to be continuously and
autoencoder (CAE) uniformly extruded from the printing nozzle, including factors
such as pumpability, extrudability, and buildability. The suc­
cessful construction of 3DP-UHPC structures relies heavily on
Table 6 printability, highlighting the need for further research to better
Categories and algorithms of optimization. understand and optimize these essential fresh properties.
Optimization Category/Algorithm Algorithm
(4) 3DP-UHPC exhibits more excellent mechanical properties than
3D printed common concrete, thanks to the reinforcements of
Local Variable neighborhood search (VNS), greedy algorithm,
steel fibers. The special casting mode leads more fibers to be
optimization simulated annealing (SA)
Regression gradient optimization Batch gradient descent (BGD), mini- distributed towards printing orientation compared with common
optimization batch gradient descent algorithm UHPC, which may increase the anisotropy of 3DP-UHPC. While
(MBGD), Stochastic gradient descent research into the microstructure of 3DP-UHPC is still in its early
(SGD), AdaGrad algorithm, RMSProp stages, recent studies have focused on the role of SCMs in matrix
algorithm, Adam algorithm
Factor machine algorithm (FMA)
microstructure and the impact of fiber interfaces. These in­
Exact algorithm Linear programming (LP) vestigations have the potential to uncover new insights into the
branch method Branch and bound method, branch and properties and behavior of 3DP-UHPC, paving the way for further
cutting method, branch and price advances in this exciting and rapidly evolving field. As such,
method
continued research into the microstructure of 3DP-UHPC repre­
Enumeration and iteration
Approximate Approximation Polynomial-time approximation sents a crucial area for future exploration and innovation.
method algorithm problem scheme (PTAS), algorithmic approach
heuristic algorithm Particle swarm optimization (PSO), Declaration of Competing Interest
firefly algorithm (FA), ant colony
algorithm (ACA), genetic algorithm
(GA), moth-flame algorithm (MFA),
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
adaptive E-Bat algorithm (AEBA) interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.

Furthermore, there is a need for more demonstration projects to Data availability

expand the application modes of 3DP-UHPC, like 3D printed
concrete permanent formwork, 3D printed composite structures, Data will be made available on request.
special-shaped structures and so on.
Acknowledgements
5. Conclusions
The authors acknowledge the financial support of National Natural
This paper reviews the intelligent progress of UHPC, which focuses Science Foundation of China under Grant 52178249 and U2006224,
on intelligent mixture design and manufacturing, which can provide Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation
positive references and support for the intelligent development of the (2022A1515011364), and Major science and technology project in
construction sector. The following conclusions can be made in light of Zhongshan city, Guangdong province (2019AG030). The authors also
the foregoing: appreciate the support of Hong Kong Green Technology Fund
(GTF202110180).
(1) While early UHPC mixture designs relied on a trial-and-error
approach, the development of particle packing models has
greatly advanced the theoretical understanding of UHPC mixture
design. Notably, the compressible packing model (CPM) and

22
D. Fan et al. Construction and Building Materials 385 (2023) 131495

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