Kansas Researchers Want to Build Tornado Shelters From 3D-Printed Concrete Blocks

Manufactured Homes Need Better Shelter

About four percent of Kansans live in manufactured homes. The median cost is around $123,000, well below stick-built alternatives. That affordability comes with a gap many residents do not notice until spring storm season: a lot of these communities have no public storm shelter.

Reese Greenlee, an assistant professor of architecture at Kansas State University, noticed the problem when he moved to the state. He argues that architects have often ignored manufactured housing, treating it as cheap or out of the way. His response is a research project aimed at giving those communities protection that matches their budget.

Coils of Concrete

Greenlee is working with Iowa State University's Computation and Construction Lab to test 3D-printed concrete blocks for storm shelters. The blocks are printed in a coiled, layered geometry that looks like continuous strips of solid material running the height of the wall. That shape is not just for show.

Traditional storm shelters use a reinforced concrete or steel shell. Greenlee wants to see if unreinforced concrete blocks, shaped by a printer, can stand up to tornado-force winds and flying debris. The coil geometry is meant to deflect impact loads better than conventional rectangular blocks. The team plans to run FEMA impact-load testing to find out if the idea holds up.

Off-Site, Modular, Multi-Use

3D-printed concrete has real advantages for this use case. It can be formed into shapes and sizes that standard concrete blocks cannot. It produces less waste and needs less labor on site. And because the blocks can be manufactured off-site, a shelter could be assembled modularly in a manufactured housing community without a full construction crew.

Greenlee also sees a design opportunity. A storm shelter that sits empty eleven months of the year is a hard sell. If the same structure doubles as a community center or recreation space, it becomes useful every day. "Start to look at shelters as pieces of infrastructure or architecture that can double as something else," he said. The goal is a shelter that does not have to live its whole life as a bunker.

Still Early

This is research, not a product. The blocks still need FEMA certification, cost analysis, and real-world testing. Greenlee is candid about that. But the premise is compelling: take a construction technology already being used for houses and businesses, and apply it to a safety problem that affordable housing often cannot afford to solve.

If the data works out, 3D-printed concrete could give Kansas communities a faster, cheaper way to add shelter where it is missing most.