Construction by Contour Crafting Using Sulfur Concrete with Planetary Applications

This paper reports on the experiments with the Contour Crafting Automated Construction process using sulfur concrete as the choice of construction material. Sulfur concrete has numerous terrestrial applications and is potentially an ideal construction material for planetary construction. On Mars, sulfur can be found in abundance and the range of temperature variation on the planet is within the safe zone for the structures to be built and survive over reasonable length of time with sulfur concrete. Several experiments have been performed at centimeter and meter scales. A FEA simulation model for the behavior of sulfur concrete based structures has been developed. Experimental results were compared with the results of simulation.