In the mid-nineties, I was heading a civil style department for a big EPC contractor in South East Asia. We experienced gained an buy to construct a paper plant.
The main creating in a paper plant is the paper device making. A normal paper equipment developing is about 300 m extended. The constructing commonly has two flooring, a person at floor amount, and just one at about 7.5 m amount. The paper equipment is set up on a basis that is not linked to the developing. The machine is accessible from the device hall at 7.50 m amount. This building homes other complex and heavy machinery and has really stringent specifications with respect to good quality, structural style and design and security. The roof is superior up and some of the sections of this constructing are subject to temperatures between 50 to 60 C. A large overhead crane straddles the upstairs equipment corridor. The differential settlement in the paper device foundation has to be much less than a single mm and all round settlement at any point a lot less than 1.25 mm. This creating, with all its factors and the equipment foundations, generally normally takes 18 months to create.
Our running director was an modern male and continually sought concepts to speed up design. A person working day, he termed me to his workplace and showed me an post narrating about a business in the US that experienced formulated approaches to build a paper machine making applying pre solid things. This paper equipment constructing was accomplished in a file time of 6 months, reported the report. We appointed the US corporation as our consultants and they did the engineering with the aid of our engineers in our business office. We designed our paper machine developing in a calendar year cutting down the time by about six months. This was regardless of a delay of about three months because of to the understanding curve and the time essential for placing up a precast plant.
Consequently commenced my twenty two several years lengthy association with pre-forged concrete. My outdated firm has created a number of large industrial crops and other constructions considering that then.
In a lot of first earth countries pre cast features for bridges, culverts have been standardized. Pre-casting models are located in close proximity to significant towns that offer these factors to the design sites. This not only decreases the design time but also the design time as just one takes advantage of normal factors whose houses are known.
There are variations of the precast concrete building these types of as tilt up building, module fitments and many others.
I have frequently wondered why India, with so much building required in the all the sectors of construction, has not embraced this method. Apart from other difficulties like want for repetition, unfriendly taxation, requirement of transport or lifting equipment and so forth., I imagine our engineers have not offered a really serious believed to establishing this procedure.
I would like to share some of my learnings.
1. Arranging is Paramount: The framework to be created from precast components has to be broken down in features, in a pre-decided configuration. It is like making the items of a jigsaw puzzle that when place jointly will kind the accomplished puzzle. It can be a blend of typical and non-normal parts.
2. God is in information: Just about every aspect hence prepared has to be thorough out to in good shape all the factors on all its sides and the embedment essential for utilities.
3. Style and design the Construction and Assemble the style and design: Normal structural engineering exercise of creating the last solution and leaving the “How?” to the construction personnel, does not perform in precast. The structural engineer has to remain associated in the course of action of pre casting, erection and placement.
To the most effective of my awareness, IS codes do not have precise provisions for pre forged buildings compared with ACI or BS codes. Some of the clauses in ACI can be substituted by provisions in their supplementary publications. This kind of provisions have to be used judiciously immediately after a suitable evaluation of the stages in the support lifestyle of the ingredient. A foremost specialist on pre-casting once mentioned “Making use of provisions of R.C.C code to pre-casting would be like playing tennis with a baseball bat”
The structural style for a precast element is completed for several phases of in its early life. Multiple degree checks are required till the aspect is put, far more checks are needed if it is a pre-stressed ingredient with partial un-bonding of tendons.
4. Joints can cause head aches: Resolving and configuring a joint amongst precast things can be an arduous undertaking. It will become a heuristic procedure to harmony between the structural requirement, functionality with regard to simple thing to consider as drinking water tightness, and the measurement of the components to which an ingredient in thing to consider is hooked up. Joints have to be created the way they have been envisaged.
5. Chopping off ears due to the fact they stick out, not only impairs hearing but also produces issues in carrying spectacles: This is recognised to arise usually in which architectural needs are of key importance. Generally some architects do not like some important arrangements made for greater joints. Executing away with these “hindering” details may perhaps lead to minimized features of the joints or the features. High-priced alternate arrangements are expected to restore functionality.
6. Building Methodology can make or split a job: Numerous decades ago, a significant bulk warehouse with pre-cast pre stressed concrete bow string girders as roof trusses was getting produced in India for a fertilizer plant. Out of twelve bowstring girders, six broke although being lifted when the some others ended up erected easily. Types were being checked and double checked and checked once more. This was before the effortless availability of the sophisticated finite ingredient evaluation that we have now. It at last dawned on anyone that the bow string girders broke for the reason that a girder whilst being lifted in tandem by two cranes, twisted out of airplane because of to various costs of lifting. A structural engineer coming up with precast components should, as a result, have the information of the lifting method.
7. High quality is the watchword: Constant High quality of generation is just one of the arguments set forward by the advocates of precast. But numerous a mismatches, rejections and failures have transpired due to watching only the high-quality of concrete and giving considerably less importance to placement of reinforcement embeds and the dimensional tolerances.
8. A one rupee maximize in the creation expense can imply a crore of rupees at the stop: Owing the repetitive mother nature of the expense of pre-casting a whole lot of considered has to be supplied to use any “great to have” ingredient. Although the most apparent price factors related to concrete are viewed vigilantly, a smaller embed or a detail, that is incorporated in the design and casting of an component for a possible use, escapes consideration. This sort of an embed that was proposed to be applied and has been forged in the ingredient has previously additional to the price tag of developing the element. When a selection of these elements are forged, the expenditure can be sizeable. If these types of redundancy if not eliminated in time, it can squander lakhs of rupees.