The Concrete Centre, part of the Mineral Products Association (MPA), is a team of qualified professionals with expertise in concrete construction, engineering and architecture.
The series was published in 2015.
The Concrete Centre provides material, design and construction guidance. Our aim is to enable all those involved in the design, use and performance of concrete and masonry to realise the potential of these materials.
This short note highlights some of the salient aspects of the design and construction of liquid-retaining structures in reinforced concrete. The guidance is based on Eurocodes BS EN 1992-1-11 and BS EN 1992-32 and the corresponding UK National Annexes.
Publish Date – 5 January 2015
Some masonry design in the UK uses concrete blocks. BS EN 1996 (Eurocode 6) covers the design of masonry for buildings and civil engineering works and is organised into four parts. This design guide covers vertical load design (strength and eccentricity) and concentrated loads.
Publish Date – 1 February 2015
The design for horizontal actions, fire and materials is considered, along with simplified methods of design. Throughout this article the Nationally Determined Parameters (NDPs) from the UK National Annexes have been used. These enable Eurocode 6 (BS EN 1996-1-1) to be applied in the UK.
Publish Date – 27 February 2015
Strut-and-tie modelling is a simple method of modelling complex stress patterns in reinforced concrete as triangulated models. It is based on the same truss analogy as the design for shear in Eurocode 2 and can be applied to many elements. It is particularly useful where normal beam theory does not apply, i.e. where plane sections do not remain plane, e.g. in deep beams, corbels and pile caps. EC2 provides information about the use of strut-and-tie modelling and this article is an introduction for engineers who want to take advantage of this useful analysis method.
Publish Date – 1 April 2015
This article discusses how to calculate an anchorage and lap length for steel ribbed reinforcement subjected to predominantly static loading using the information in Section 8 of Eurocode 2. Coated steel bars (e.g. coated with paint, epoxy or zinc) are not considered. The rules are applicable to normal buildings and bridges.
Publish Date – 1 May 2015
The design of concrete slabs and beams is not generally affected by fire design requirements. However, these can be a governing factor in the sizing of columns, particularly in multi-storey buildings. This article therefore concentrates on the guidance given in Eurocode 2 on the sizing of concrete columns for different fire resistance periods.
Publish Date – 1 June 2015
Post-tensioned (PT) concrete floors are now widely used in the UK, particularly for high-rise buildings. This article provides information on how to scheme a PT slab and how the use of post-tensioning affects the rest of the structure. A more detailed guide to the design of PT floors can be found in The Concrete Society's Technical Report 43 (TR43): Post-tensioned concrete floors: Design handbook.
Publish Date – 1 July 2015
The concluding article in this series discusses the span-to-effective-depth method for verifying deflection limits of slabs and beams. (This article was corrected on 1 October 2015. For details, see the corrigendum published on page 37 of the October 2015 issue.)
Publish Date – 31 July 2015