New technique has earthquake resistance all wrapped up
Highway columns of glass or carbon fibre help structures meet and exceed building code requirements
Just how trustworthy are disintegrating columns that bulge and expose bent, rusting steel on elevated highways? “They are sitting ducks that, in an earthquake, could crumble,” says Professor Shamim Sheikh of U of Ts Department of Civil Engineering. His team has devised a strong, cost-effective method of structural reinforcement that is already proving its worth on highways and other concrete structures around the Greater Toronto Area.
Currently, contractors repair highway columns by adding more concrete and steel to the structure. Sheikhs alternative, which uses glass or carbon fibre instead of steel, provides up to five times the strength of steel, helping structures meet and exceed the requirements of the current building codes. “It will extend the life of highways and give people precious extra seconds to get to safety during an earthquake,” he says. “We think cities everywhere, particularly in earthquake zones, will benefit from this technique.”
The procedure itself, which uses epoxy and a large, flexible sheet of glass or carbon fibres as the reinforcing material, is not new, Sheikh notes. However, his team is the first in North America to devise specialized retrofitting schemes for concrete structures. Sheikh and his team wrapped the materials around the highway columns and they strengthened bridge culverts with fibres – specifically, on Highways 401, 404 and the QEW – all without requiring any traffic-snarling road closures. The technique is detailed in the July 2002 issue of Engineering Structures.
Media Contact
All latest news from the category: Process Engineering
This special field revolves around processes for modifying material properties (milling, cooling), composition (filtration, distillation) and type (oxidation, hydration).
Valuable information is available on a broad range of technologies including material separation, laser processes, measuring techniques and robot engineering in addition to testing methods and coating and materials analysis processes.
Newest articles
Making diamonds at ambient pressure
Scientists develop novel liquid metal alloy system to synthesize diamond under moderate conditions. Did you know that 99% of synthetic diamonds are currently produced using high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) methods?[2]…
Eruption of mega-magnetic star lights up nearby galaxy
Thanks to ESA satellites, an international team including UNIGE researchers has detected a giant eruption coming from a magnetar, an extremely magnetic neutron star. While ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL was observing…
Solving the riddle of the sphingolipids in coronary artery disease
Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have uncovered a way to unleash in blood vessels the protective effects of a type of fat-related molecule known as a sphingolipid, suggesting a promising new…