The first ever 3D-printed headwall has been tested on the A30 Chiverton to Carland Cross upgrade in Cornwall.

The curved headwall was installed by Costain and required no steelwork. It was trialled on one of the dualling project's under-road wildlife crossings.

Once completed, the scheme will provide 33 multi-species crossings across the length of the new 8.7-mile dual carriageway.

The trial is part of the wider Digital Roads of the Future Partnership, a collaboration led by Costain with partner company Versarien, the University of Cambridge and National Highways.

The first trial headwall was printed at Versarien's Gloucestershire operations centre in December, and during the printing process, several sensors were embedded into the structure by Cambridge University researchers to provide temperature and movement data.

The headwall was chosen because it allows easy access for monitoring. If the trial is successful 3D printing could be used on future infrastructure projects.


Commenting on the trial, Bhavika Ramrakhyani, Head of Materials at Costain said: "I feel this has brought industry and academia together to support real-life trials of emerging technologies with lots of practical challenges to mitigate.

"These trials have assisted towards undertaking further research and development towards the use of 3D concrete printing within the infrastructure industry as we need to understand the behaviour of the material and technology in real-life situations to be used for future infrastructure implementation.

"This provides a step change in the construction industry that there is no 'one size fits all', but different solutions are needed to combat climate change and increase productivity in parallel.”

Reflecting on the partnership, Joanna White, National Highways' Roads Development Director, said: "We're committed to exploring sustainable and innovative ways of constructing and maintaining our roads and this marks a significant first step as part of the work carried out by the Roads Research Alliance.

"It's a collective effort, we're pleased to be partnering with the University and our supply chain and through our collaborative funding and research, we look forward to realising and delivering further initiatives within the highways industry.

"Together we are developing ideas that will improve how we design, maintain, operate and build roads as well as increase safety on our network. This is the first time National Highways has formed an alliance like this to deliver research, and we look forward to seeing the exciting results."