|
|
|
|
At the National Concrete Bridge
Council(NCBC)/Post-Tensioning Institute (PTI)
2004 Concrete Bridge Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina May 15
- May18, 2004, Mr. Baumann will present the following paper
ADVANCES IN BRIDGE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION USING RECENT IMPROVEMENTS IN RAPID CONSTRUCTION OF TALL SEISMIC RESISTANT BUILDINGS IN CALIFORNIA By : Hanns U. Baumann, S.E. Baumann Research and Development Corporation
510 Avenida de la Estrella, Suite K, San Clemente, CA 92672 USA Tel: (949) 361-0888 Fax (949) 361-0868 E-mail: hanns@bautech.com
ABSTRACT
The economic need to rapidly design and construct tall earthquake resistant buildings in California, USA, has resulted in advancement of both design and construction technology for concrete bridges. After extensive development and testing for more than a decade, the world’s tallest precast concrete building in a zone of highest seismicity, a 39-story building, has been construction in San Francisco, using a new type of concrete reinforcement, Welded Reinforcement Grids (WRG™), that saves cost, time and labor. Also in San Francisco is a recently completed 42-story building that, by using the WRG™ reinforcement system, replaced 32 separate pieces of conventional confinement reinforcement with one-piece WRG™.
A 1.2 million S.F. 24-story building in Long Beach, California USA is being constructed with 75% reduction of labor with the rapid assembly of WRG™ reinforcement cages.
Testing at five universities and national laboratories of Canada and the USA has shown that structures, when designed with this new reinforcement, will have little to no damage during a violent earthquake. The tests also proved that the structures, designed using the new WRG™ reinforcement product, required significantly less concrete and reinforcement steel.
The success of the Welded Reinforcement Grids in tall California earthquake resistant buildings has caused a great interest by structural engineers in their use in other types of structures. Fatigue testing of WRG™ in Lightweight High Performance Concrete (LHPC) is planned in preparation for use of WRG™ in LHPC in segmental bridges where the dimensional accuracy of ±1/8” (3mm) allows use of automation of the WRG™ reinforcing cage assembly. KEY WORDS Welded Reinforcement Grids, WRG™, Earthquake Resistant, Rapidly Construct, Tall Earthquake Resistant Building, Reinforcement Steel, Precast, Segmental Bridges, Bridge Construction
|
|
BauGrid® Construction Systems are proprietary products of BauTech®, Inc. and are covered by one or more of the following U.S. Patents 5,218,809 and 5,392,580., and other Foreign Patents. BauTech® and BauGrid® are registered trademarks, approved by and registered with the US Patent Office. Trademarks for BauGrid® Welded Reinforcement Grids, BauGrid® WRG, WRG and Welded Reinforcement Grids are pending. Approvals include ICC-ES Evaluation Report No. ER-5192, City of Los Angeles Research Report No. 25438. This page was last edited on 07/01/08 Copyright BauTech, Inc., 2004 - 2008. All rights reserved Contact webmaster: bill@thecoburngroup.com |