Components for use in large-scale concrete slab constructions

Abstract

Structural reinforcing members are supplied for use in resisting shear forces within larger construction projects using reinforced concrete, along sites where strengthening ribs or beams between formers are to be created. The members also force the channels apart and maintain the reinforcing therein before curing at predetermined dimensions and spacings. A variant provides reinforcing cages that can be put together on the site for maintaining multiple reinforcing rods. The cages of different beams can intermesh at rib cross-over points. Example cages are eight-bar cages where each bar is made of 1.25 inch diameter reinforcing steel. During assembly the bars are held in place by the members with the assistance of gravity so that relatively little linking together of the reinforcing parts is required.

Description

FIELD [0001] This invention relates to building construction, to the provision of reinforcement for concrete structures, and in particular to structural components for incorporation in reinforced concrete masses to become built structures such as floors, buildings, bridges, or roads. BACKGROUND [0002] Concrete is a widely used cold-castable “liquid stone” used as a building material. After the reactions involved in setting and curing have taken place it has good compressive strength but relatively poor tensile and shear strength, so rods of reinforcing iron are cast into masses of concrete in order to restore tensile and shear strength. For use in mainly single-storey domestic housing floors poured as single slabs, the inventor has previously described a floor construction technique using buried void formers (made from a foam plastics such as polystyrene foam) to form a matrix of stiffening beams in the spaces left between the formers, using the inventor's stirrups to place reinforc...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0020] Preferably, where intersection of respective arrays of reinforcing rods is expected, the groups of components for use in a first set of beams is made longer than the groups of components for use in a second, intersecting set of beams by about the diameter of the reinforcing rods, so that the arrays of reinforcing rods may cross over each other without being bent.

Problems solved by technology

After the reactions involved in setting and curing have taken place it has good compressive strength but relatively poor tensile and shear strength, so rods of reinforcing iron are cast into masses of concrete in order to restore tensile and shear strength.

Use of these stirrups sharply reduces the labour content of a floor.

Problems associated with this technique include the matter of creating cage structures of just the right size (let alone possible distortion during transport and placement) and of moving the heavy, large, and not particularly strong structures safely and conveniently to their final positions.

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