INDUSTRIAL FLOORS

Fibre reinforced concrete

Concrete floors with dispersed reinforcing fibres gain popularity in planning and construction of various building types, from industrial, storage, office, and parking buidings to agricultural use.

The undeniable advantage is increased construction speed and lower price, as the technology dispenses with several fund and time consuming factors, such as concrete pumps, or installation of steel bar or mesh reinforcing.

The fiber content in this type of reinforced slabs is designed to correspond to the specific static and dynamic load requirements, geological conditions and other factors.

Presently we offer two types of dispersed reinforcing, each having specific properties. The first type uses milled or drawn steel wires with a maximum thickness to length ratio of 1:40 (the typical length of one piece of wire is around 50 mm). The second type uses polypropylene fibers in concrete with lower overall thickness (for example in cement screed, etc., where it replaces steel mesh). It is possible to further increase static load bearing properties of the cured concrete or eliminate the formation microcracks by introducing additional polypropylene cords.

Dispersed reinforcing using milled or drawn steel wires provides the concrete floors with both improved static load bearing capacity and higher resistance to dynamic stresses.

The principle lies in the omnidirectionality of fibre positioning within the set concrete. In case the underlying material offers only semi-rigid support for the concrete slab and the floor is subject to dynamic loads (such as pallet trucks or other traffic), the stresses within the material of the slab are compensated. In these conditions the loads on the slab are virtually omnidirectional, with predominating positive and negative bending. Dispersed reinforcing further offers a decrease of approx. 10 % in necessary material thickness compared to non-reinforced concrete.

The amount of reinforcing fibres required by the static calculations is added to the wet mixture in the mixer trucks to be evenly distributed within the material.