Twintec concrete flooring specialists            getting the concrete right

CONCRETE

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world and stating the obvious is the single most important component of a Twintec floor slab.  Get the concrete wrong and no amount of logistics expertise, management planning, skill from the workers or accuracy of the specialist equipment used will make it right.

Twintec employs dedicated, experienced concrete specialists throughout the Twintec Group to ensure the concrete is close to perfect for the specific job in hand.

Divan De Jongh, concrete specialist for the Middle East, worked for some of the leading concrete companies in the GCC prior to joining Twintec.  He states “Material testing in the laboratory and trial mixes are essential prior to starting works on each new project.  The variation in materials from plant to plant and country to country can be significant and need to be properly assessed and tested prior to starting on site. The finished Twintec slab depends on it”.

Following years of extensive research and development (see previous article), Twintec has developed industry leading steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) mixes. Adding high performance steel fibres, concrete will behave like a composite material with an important gain in structural ductility and shrinkage control.

Whilst the effectiveness of GGBS in reducing embodied carbon dioxide of concrete and its controlling influence on setting times is well known, its incorporation into concrete mix designs has to be carefully managed and balanced with the other components. With extensive knowledge of how SFRC performs, Twintec takes total responsibility for concrete mix design and delivery co-ordination, considering every aspect including:

• Workability
• Compressive strength
• Shrinkage
• Rate and timing of bleed
• Setting time
• Combined aggregate grading curves
• Fibre mixing
• Quality of component materials

In practice this was demonstrated recently on the completion of the Carrefour DC, Dubai floor slab (52,000m2 Freeplan SFRC ‘jointless’ floor) working with Transgulf Readymix. Yasar Abualrous, Technical and Marketing Director, Transgulf Readmix explained “The selection of concrete materials, mix design formulation, and testing program were coordinated jointly by Transgulf Readymix and Twintec's team to precisely meet the objectives of the high performance ‘jointless’ concrete floor slab. Using Transgulf Readymix's Dubai Central Laboratory (DCL) certified concrete batching plants and delivery trucks, Transgulf met the robust quality control strategy demanded by Twintec to successfully achieve the high standard of the finished floor”.