When it comes to civil engineering, structures must stand the test of time. It’s no good if the support structures for a bridge start to crumble a couple of decades after its original construction or a dam comes under more pressure that it can hold. The outcome in either scenario it’s fair to say is not going to be good and lives will be at stake. This is where reinforcement for buildings and other important structures comes into play.
Why is Steel So Popular for Enhancing Structural Integrity?
Not everyone understands why the use of steel rebar and other reinforcement steel products are used so frequently in construction products, especially within the civil engineering field. So, let’s cover this first to avoid any confusion.
Concrete is only strong under normal, expected forces. However, when hit with unexpected forces such as an earthquake, a slight tremor or freak weather conditions that hit the structure with gale-force winds or hailstones the size of your fist, that’s another matter entirely. In this situation, reinforcement is required to compliment concrete as the primary building material.
Steel is the strongest metal that’s available at a reasonable selling price to keep civil engineering projects costs at an acceptable level. While any steel has a plasticity issue at a certain level of stress or shear forces, it holds up extremely well, nonetheless. This is evidenced well with a series of storms hitting UK shores where structures made from concrete and buttressed by concrete reinforcement were still standing after the storm had passed. For the price, steel can’t be beaten for the reinforcement it provides in civil engineering projects across the UK.
Are There Alternative Materials That Make Sense?
The difficulty with using alternative structural support materials within the civil engineering field is that there are rarely small projects. Whether it’s a new head office for a local council, a new bridge to replace one down river that’s getting long in the tooth or an essential dam designed to generate environmentally-friendly energy production for a local community, usually the projects aren’t small. And that presents a dilemma.
While someone can go off-grid, buy a parcel of land somewhere out of the way and get permission to construct a mud hut or an energy-efficient dome-shaped structure that deflects light to stay comfortable all year round, that just won’t work with major civil engineering building projects.
In terms of alternative materials, they’re also not cost-effective. For instance, carbon fibre is an excellent material delivering greater compressive durability and denser too. You can read more on this here https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a25131/carbon-fiber-miracle-material/. But, it’s currently not possible to produce it at sufficient scale or at a price point that makes budgetary sense for substantial projects. A carbon fibre shell might be ideal for a high-end, lightweight Lenovo laptop, but that’s as far as that goes.
Other alternative materials like stainless steel and fibrous polymers aren’t appropriate in many cases and suffer from potential erosion that’s worse than that steel generally suffers from. How much and how possible it is to repair or maintain structures produced using these alternative building materials is an open question because they’re used so rarely in civil engineering.
When compared to high-quality steel using iron deposits which are currently plentiful and affordable, the usefulness of steel as a basic building material to reinforce all kinds of structures makes complete sense.
Why Do Concrete and Steel Work in Combination?
The expansion characteristics at the thermal level are found to be quite close when looking at steel and concrete. Because of this, there’s enough give and take with the movement within both building materials that they complement each other well. If this were not the case, steel might expand and concrete wouldn’t budge a millimetre, with cracks appearing all over the surface of the concrete as a result.
The alkalinity within concrete is also helpful when used with steel because it’s a natural rust avoider. This helps to keep the structure healthier and structurally intact for far longer.
Given the frequent use of steel reinforcement with concrete, efforts have been underway to find solutions to problems that do arise with the use of steel in construction. Rust is always a concern in the long term, however, it’s now been found that using cathodic protection, the steel avoids rusting inside the concrete slab. Running a current through the concrete extends steel’s useable life.
New monitoring devices are also coming to market that can use acoustic and other methods to detect areas of a building where rust is being detected. Such systems can provide early warning of a potential future issue for older structures, which is invaluable for both maintenance purposes and public safety too.
What Type of Different Reinforcement is Needed for Major Civil Projects?
For larger structures that are both sizable and will be excessively heavy, it’s necessary to build out a foundational structure that is strong enough. Using steel pile reinforcement foundational elements, which are created to reach a depth at least three times greater than the breadth of the planned structure, provides deep foundational support.
In case these kinds of deeper foundational methods are unclear, the purpose of using a deep foundation is that the building load is moved underground to the piling support area. Instead of relying on a shallower foundation and a minor subsurface taking the remainder of building load, for civil projects it’s often necessary to go deeper and use a different approach.
Using a reliable steel reinforcement supplier is an absolute necessity to ensure that the best quality iron was used to produce the steel that comprises their range of structural support products. A UK supplier like Heaton Products does just that and, as a result, is often used as a key supplier in civil construction projects for buildings, dams, bridges and other appropriate structures where steel is used for reinforcement and deeper foundations are often required to handle excess loads.
Is Reinforcement Useful for Shallow Development Areas?
With many civil projects, there are still areas that have footpaths, driveways, and other places where deep foundations aren’t required, but concrete reinforcement is still recommended.
For footpaths and driveways, the use of a reinforcement steel mesh is often suggested. These types of standardised products in the construction industry (see for reference: https://www.heatonproducts.co.uk/products/reinforcement-mesh/) add to the tensile strength of the concrete. As a result, it holds up to a great amount of foot traffic or vehicles and doesn’t get easily damaged, especially just below the surface area.
The use of reinforcement products, even on pathways and other level areas that are frequently used, allows them to avoid damage, necessitating repairs from the maintenance crew of the building. Given that some sites are visited regularly, the need to develop all areas to last decades reduces costly repairs and replacement projects that are difficult to fund and get satisfactorily completed.
Building for the long-term should certainly be a goal in civil engineering projects. They’re so expensive and difficult to complete that doing anything less than the best doesn’t make sense. Building firms that work on civil engineering projects want to be hired for future projects, which fortunately provides a strong enough incentive to produce structures that will stand the test of time. And in a time when bad weather is getting to be a more serious problem, building major civil projects right the first time is more necessary than ever.