Reinforced Concrete Facts

Loads of building especially flats is curried by reinforced concrete columns. The columns have to be constructed both vertically and horizontally in order for them to absorb the pressure equally.

Basically reinforcement is critical in giving he newly built structure tension strength. If the reinforcement had never been invented, then many concrete building would not have been built. Reinforcement on a building encompasses many types of components and structures. Some of them include beams, foundations, walls, slabs frames, columns and many more.

Most of the time, many reinforced concrete can be classified as cast in-situ concrete or precast. The floor system is where much of the focus on reinforced concrete takes place. The key to building an optimal building structures lye’s under designing and implementation. There can be a big impact on the building as a whole if a small change in the design of the floor is made. The impact is usually realized on the construction schedule, material cost, operating cost, the ultimate strength, end use of the building and occupancy level. Basically concrete is a mixture of Portland cement and ballast together with water.

The cement hydrates after it is mixed with water locking the aggregate into a rigid structure after forming opaque crystal lattices encapsulating. Any small appreciable tension can easily break the microscopic rigid lattice which leads to separation and cracking of the concrete. If this happens, then the building can easily collapse. Therefore reinforced concrete should be balance very well to avoid such accidents. There are about three key characters that give the concrete special properties.

First of all steels coefficient of thermal expansion is similar to that one of concrete. This results in the internal stresses elimination due to different thermal contraction and expansion. The second character is that after the concrete has hardened and taken shape, it now resumes the surface details making the stresses to be equally shared between it (concrete) and the steel bars.

Steel is usually more resistant to corrosion mainly because of the presence of alkaline chemicals. It is not just any steel that should be used for reinforced concrete. Construction steels come in different sizes and each size is supposed to be used for its intended work. By using steel for work that it was not intended, the structure can easily collapse and cause destruction of properties and even death. Therefore, safety measures should always be considered when building any form of structure.