JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Smart Cities - November 2019 - 18

3D printing and new materials are at the core of China's smarter cities

nents were printed from composite
materials containing polyethylene
fibre concrete to match the structural
performance of conventional materials.
The design process involved the construction of a 1:4 scale physical model of the bridge, built to demonstrate
the scheme's viability and proving
that the bridge could hold pedestrians crowding the entire surface. For
the actual construction, concrete
components for the bridge were
printed by two robotic arms, over
the course of 450 hours. The streamlined process is estimated to have
produced savings of 33% when compared to a more conventional construction process - attributed mainly
to the elimination of templates and
reinforcing bars, according to information website ArchDaily.

launched over an area of 19.55 square
kilometres. The final plan is to make
the entire 1,795km² area capable of
absorbing and reusing rainwater in
order to remedy urban flooding, save
water resources and protect the local
ecological system.

Water management strategies
Facing rapid urbanization, China enthusiastically embraced the concept
of "sponge cities", a reimagination
of the urban environment where almost every raindrop is captured, controlled and reused.

So far, 75 projects are underway to
build roads, parks and water treatment facilities with permeable materials. The expected investment is
about 6.9 billion yuan (US$1.05
billion), according to the Guizhou
province's official data.

The Chinese government has already
chosen 16 pilot cities, including
Wuhan, Chongqing and Xiamen, and
allocated 400 to 600 million yuan to
each of them for the implementation
of innovative water management
strategies that would gradually transform these cities into "sponge cities".

Meanwhile, the Area has installed 70
monitoring devices to collect operational data from the sponge city facilities, including rainfall utilization,
water levels and river system data.
The information platform will manage and analyze the monitored data
to predict potential environmental
hazards.

In June 2015, the Gui'an New Area,
in Guizhou province, was approved
by the state to become one of the 16
pilot areas for China's sponge city initiative, which aims to build natural
systems in urban areas for mitigating rainwater runoff and replenish
groundwater through the use of permeable surfaces and dedicated infrastructure.
Construction works were first

Fig. 2: The Yanweizhou
Park project in Jinhua
City, China, one of the 30
chinese cities as part of
its «sponge city initiative.»
(©Turenscape)

"For the construction of Gui'an New
Area's main road, New Era avenue, a
variety of new processes and technologies were also designed", Xu Dezhi,
an engineer at Gui'an New District
Development and Investment, explained to a local newspaper.
The rainwater inspection well is
transformed into a composite overflow well, and the system and sponge
facilities are effectively combined

jec composites magazine / SPECIAL ISSUE Smart Cities / November 2019

to ensure that the well cover meets
the strength requirements, but also
enhances the landscape effect. In
addition, New Era avenue also uses
composite materials and pebbles in a
rainwater filtration pool.
Chinese eco-cities: will the utopia finally become a reality?
Beyond water management, on a
national level, China's central authorities approved in 2017 a master plan
for Xiong'an New Area, near Beijing,
in central Hebei province, reiterating
that its creation will carry "lasting importance for the millennium to come."
As a testing ground for green urbanization, the government vowed that
Xiong'an's population will not outgrow the existing resources to support it.
The city will be powered by "clean
electricity", which in China does
not exclude natural gas, according to
specialized website Chinadialogue.
However, at least half of the city's
power is expected to come from renewable sources.
More specifically, Xiong'an will be
the first test case of the Chinese
leadership's ecological vision being applied to a mega-city, in which
everything needs to be built from
scratch in what was previously an
economic backwater of Beijing.

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Smart Cities - November 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Smart Cities - November 2019