Civil Engineering Information

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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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

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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.

Fig 1: Load Bearing Construction on brick

Fig 2: RCC framed construction

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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)

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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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.

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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By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil

Introduction
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 termed as load bearing construction (Fig 1). This is essentially because the entire load coming from the slabs, beams, walls etc is transmitted to the foundation through the brick walls.

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By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil
Ion Exchange India Limited

Conventional way of rebar lapping / splicing as per BIS

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By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil
Ion Exchange India Limited

Now-a-days for controlling rust/corrosion of rebar some extra treatment is being carried out on rebar, making it more resistant to rusting/corrosion under unfavorable circumstances. Some of these treated rebars normally used are: (1) Fusion bonded epoxy coated rebar, (2) Cement-polymer composite coated rebar,(3) Corrosion resistant steel (CRS) rebar. The following comparison is being made aiming to give a clear cut idea on advantages/disadvantages of each type, which might help and give an idea to construction industry for decision making of selection of any particular type.

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By
Sourav Dutta
Manager-Civil
Ion Exchange India Limited

Construction industry at present is facing a major hike in material price, especially cement, sand and stone chips. The following document is prepared to highlight the reduction in concrete manufacturing cost upon using Fly Ash (BIS3812). The method of mix design has been done in reference with BIS10262-2009. Hope that any contractor over India will benefit from the given working and follow the suggested method to reduce their construction cost.

This will have the following advantages: (1) Reduction in use of construction materials which are facing scarcity now-a-days, (2) Reduction of construction cost for contractor, (3) Use of fly ash in a effective manner, which are generated as waste product from thermal power plants and various industrial plants, (4) Assisting in scientific disposal of waste product from thermal power plants and various industrial plants.

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India has been plagued by some catastrophic earthquake tremors in past that have caused loss of property and human beings:

However, during the earthquake in New Zealand on 3^rd September 2010 (magnitude on Richter’s scale: 7.0), only 2 people were injuredwhich was caused by falling masonry and glass. Interestingly, the said earthquake had struck when most people were asleep. Therefore it is clear that “EARTHQUAKES DON’T KILL PEOPLE, BUILDINGS DO!”
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