November  2005  

Concrete tall buildings in China

Qiu Hongxing and Ding Dajun

In the past 20 years, a large number of tall buildings have been constructed in China. This paper describes various types of tall buildings in China, namely, the framed buildings, shear wall and frame-shear wall buildings, tube structures, etc. The authors highlight the salient design features of some of the prominent buildings of China.



















Interfacial transition zone in HSC - Effect of fly ash and micro silica

Praveen Kumar and S. K. Kaushik

High strength concrete (HSC) mixes, if made with cement as the only binder material, results in the formation of a large quantity of calcium hydroxide (CH), particularly in the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) area, near the aggregate surfaces. This may lead to an early deterioration of such concretes. Binary mixes involving cement and micro silica consumes CH in the ITZ zone. Another method of improving the ITZ is to adopt a ternary mix of fly ash and micro silica. The paper presents an evaluation of the ITZ investigated through scanning electron micrographs with the three options for making HSC, that is, OPC alone, OPC and micro-silica, and OPC, high volumes of low calcium fly ash together with small amount of micro-silica. It is concluded that a 'C-S-H rich' ITZ is found in a binary mix and a densified ITZ in a ternary mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Controlling the crack width of flexural RC members

N. Subramanian

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures built using high strength deformed bars and designed using limit state design method were found to have larger crack widths. To control these crack widths and to enhance durability, different codes prescribe limiting crack widths based on the environment in which the structure exists. The latest revision of the Indian code stresses the importance of durability and has introduced formulae to calculate the crack widths. Unfortunately, the formulae given in the Indian code are complex and are seldom used in practice. A similar approach was used in the American code till 1999. However, recent research has found that there is no correlation between corrosion and crack widths. Also, there was a large scatter in the measured crack widths even in controlled laboratory experiments. Hence, a simple formula, involving the clear cover and calculated stress in reinforcement at service load has been included in the latest revision of the ACI code. A similar formula which also takes into account the effect of epoxy coating on reinforcement is suggested for the Indian code. Discussions on controlling the flexural cracking in the flanges of T-beams and side face reinforcement of large reinforced concrete beams are also included in the paper. The author highlights the need of introducing a simple formula for controlling crack widths in Indian codes on similar lines of the ACI code.

 

 

 

 










Fracture energy of normal and HSC beams

R. Vidya Sagar, S.V. Dinesh and A.C. Santosh

In this paper, an experimental investigation on fracture energy of normal and high strength concrete (HSC) beams with variable notch depths is reported. HSC is being extensively used in the construction industry. Although HSC has many advantages when compared to conventional concrete, it is brittle and this is a cause of concern with respect to its use in structures. The behaviour of HSC can be better understood by studying the fracture behaviour. The fracture energy is an important parameter for modelling the fracture behaviour of concrete. The size effect law indicates that the failure load of similar structures, when normalised by the structure's characteristic dimensions, decreases with increasing size. In this paper, the results of the fracture energy, Gf , and fracture toughness of normal and HSC are reported. The size effect on the fracture energy is measured by using three-point bend tests on notched concrete beam specimens of notch depth ratios of 0.15 and 0.2.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 


Cyclic behaviour of precast RC connections

Manoj K. Joshi, C.V.R. Murty and M. P. Jaisingh

Earthquake damages of precast structures can be attributed to poor connections between precast elements and also between precast elements and lateral load-resisting system. In this context, four experiments were performed on precast and corresponding monolithic exterior beam-column joint sub-assemblage specimens. The schemes for the anchorage of beam bars were different in the two sets of specimens. Further, in precast specimens, the connectivity of reinforcement bars between beam and column was achieved by welding the exposed bars of the components in the joint region. Under displacement-controlled pseudo-static loading, the precast specimen with beam bars anchored into the column performed better than the precast specimen with continuous U-bars as beam reinforcement; this performance of the former was comparable to that of the corresponding monolithic specimen.























Rehabilitation of corrosion damaged RC beams with ferrocement laminates

B. Vidivelli and C. Antony Jeyasehar

This paper summarises the results of a multiphase experimental programme and analytical study to investigate the viability of using externally-bonded ferrocement laminates to rehabilitate corrosion damaged reinforced concrete (RC) beams. For this study, eighteen RC beams of size 125 mm 250 mm 3200 mm were cast, damaged by reinforcement corrosion and after appropriate corrosion repairs, rehabilitated with ferrocement laminates. All the beams were tested in flexure under a four-point bending regime. The loading system consisted of four cycles of repeated loading at 10 kN intervals up to ultimate failure. The overall performance of the rehabilitated beams was evaluated by considering the equivalent elastic forces using energy and deflection approaches. Results from experimental data were compared with the results from nonlinear analysis and it was seen that the proposed composite beams have better ductility, cracking strength and ultimate capacity.