Experimental setup for testing climatic stress component in vegetation via AM: challenges and new opportunities

This study aims to analyze the challenges and the opportunities in developing an experimental setup to test climatic stress on vegetation using additive manufacturing (AM). Vegetation is unavoidable to analyze as species are the components of vertical green structures (VGS). These structures can increase the amount of green infrastructure in built environments optimizing space-related concerns. One benefit of VGS is to act as a thermal insulator by changing microclimate. It helps to stabilize temperature, and to reduce energy needs’ amount. To optimize these benefits, the vegetation selection must be done in an efficient way and each plant’s reaction to hygro-thermal variations should be evaluated quantitatively. AM offers opportunity to create reference object to study the effect of hygro-thermal modifications on leaves. In fact, AM-leaves used as reference shapes in comparison with real leaves’ shapes are not modifiable in the range of the experimental climate conditions and may help in detecting anomalies. The experimental procedure has still to be created and tested. This paper underlines the challenges met while developing such preliminary experimental setup and the initial tests which have offered solutions to the technical barriers.