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Civil Engineering Information

Dampness of Wall And The Necessity Of Kerb Concrete In Sunken Areas

By
Er. Vaishnav C R Nair

Introduction
The slabs are made depressed in depth form the general floor level in wet area like toilets, balconies, wash area in kitchen etc. This is to ensure the wet and dry area separations in buildings. Even though the sunken slabs provided the toilet and balcony areas are found with a major quality problem of Dampness. This is due to the continues contact of water with building blocks. Here comes the importance of Kerb Construction.

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Different tests for rebar

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

Brand embossing
On rebar pieces, different items are encrypted in the following manner:

Brand embossing

Here, X = Dia of rebar in mm, eg, 20
ABCD = Brand of rebar, eg, TATA TISCON / SAIL / JSPL etc
Y = Yield stress of rebar, eg, 500 indicates Fe500 with yield stress=500 Mpa
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Formwork : Critical points to take care during construction

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

Design and construction:
The design and construction of formwork should take account of safety and of the surface finish required. The formwork should be sufficiently rigid and tight to prevent loss of grout or mortar from the fresh concrete, during its placing and construction.

Formwork and its supports should maintain their correct position and be to correct shape and profile so that the final concrete structure is within the limits of the dimensional tolerances specified. They should be designed to withstand the worst combination of self-weight, reinforcement weight, wet concrete weight, concrete pressure, and construction and wind loads, together with all incidental dynamic effects caused by placing, vibrating and compacting the concrete.

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Readybuild: Pre-fabricated rebars ready-to-fix at site leading to faster construction

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

Common Hazards/issues normally countered at all construction sites:

Human error in rebar fabrication (manual).
Fig 1 Incorrect bend
Fig 1 : Incorrect bend

Compromise with safety and quality.

Fig 2 Safety and Quality issues upon using rebar cutter
Fig 2 : Safety and Quality issues upon using rebar cutter

Procurement schedule delays affecting site progress, and thereby delaying project completion.

Inventory management. Capital locked in inventory.
Fig 3 Lack of space at site affects storage procurement
Fig 3 : Lack of space at site affects storage/procurement

Rebar pilferage.
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Higher Diameter Reinforcement- Leading to faster/cheaper construction

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

The first version of BIS 1786 came out in 1985 when in Cl.5.1, the code suggested the nominal sizes as shown below:

Fig 1 (s) BIS1786-1985 and the relevant clause
Fig 1 (s) BIS1786-1985 and the relevant clause1
Fig 1 (s) : BIS1786-1985 and the relevant clause

The next version of the code BIS 1786 was introduced in 2008, where nominal sizes were rationalized and nominal sizes 7 mm, 18 mm, 22 mm, 45 mm and 50 mm had been removed. In Cl. 6.1, the code had suggested the nominal sizes as shown below:

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High Quality Cement and its Usage

By
Shubham Sunil Malu

ABSTRACT:
Concrete is a basic building material that will continue to be in demand far into the future. A world without concrete, and its dominant precursor, Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), is hard to imagine. Although there are different types of concrete that have been developed for use in different applications, their common virtues are familiarity, versatility, strength, durability, wide availability, fire resistance, resistance to the elements and comparatively low cost.Cement industry is growing at a rapid pace in India and over the globe. Many new brands are available in the market but selection of good cement is very important for an engineer. Many a time construction project fails due to poor quality of cement.

This paper will show you what are the factors affecting the selection of cement and cement strength classification. Also, the quality control of cement and need of consistency of quality in cement. Thus the project, can be secured to extent with the selection of proper quality of cement.

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High-rise canvas / Industrialization in India: Cheaper construction

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

It is very clear that metro cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Bengaluru are having increasing development, with tier-II cities also coming up in competition, leading to large land/plot size unavailability. Accommodating increasing population will require the FSI (Floor-space index) / FAR (Floor-area ratio) to be higher.

Fig 1 High-Rise Canvas over the world now-a-days
Fig 1 : High-Rise Canvas over the world now-a-days

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Myths on Beam construction – Challenge to overcome

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

There are a number of ways in which the superstructure can be built. In areas where average to good quality bricks are available, the walls of houses for two to three storeyed constructions can be built out of bricks with the slabs, lintels, chajja etc. in reinforced concrete. Such construction is supported entirely on load bearing brick walls (Fig 1), foundation of which ultimately transfers the building load to underneath soil.

Load Bearing Construction on brick
Fig 1: Load Bearing Construction on brick

Fig 2 RCC framed construction
Fig 2: RCC framed construction

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Salient features of Foundation Construction

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

What is Foundation?

Any structure can be divided into 2 parts:
1. Superstructure: Part of structure above Ground level (GL)
2. Substructure/ Foundation: Part of structure below GL

Components of foundation:
Typically there are 3 components of foundation: (i) Footing, (ii) Column, (iii) Tie beam (refer to picture below)

components-of-foundation

What is a footing?
Footing is that part of substructure that ultimately transfers the load (dead/live/wind/seismic) to the supporting soil in such a way that the safe load bearing capacity of soil is not exceeded (refer to table 1 for estimation of the safe load bearing capacity of the soil). Footing is a structure constructed in brick work masonry or RCC (refer to figure 1) under the base of a wall or RCC column for distributing the load over a large area.

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Proper Slab Construction Concepts – A Challenge to overcome

By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

What is slab?
A RCC (Reinforced Cement Concrete) slab is the most common structural element of any type of building. Horizontal slabs, typically between 4 and 20 inches (100 and 500 millimeters) thick, are most often used to construct floors and ceilings.Here discussion on “flat slab” has not been considered.

proper-slab-construction-concepts

proper-slab-construction-concepts2

Typical loads to be considered for slab design
(i) Dead load: Any permanent load acting on the slab e.g. self-weight of slab, weight of floor finish & plaster

(ii) Live Load: Any non-permanent or moving load e.g. weight of occupants, furniture, and partitionon the slab

(iii) Snow load (if any)

Note: Earthquake and Wind loads are not considered in the design of slabs.

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