concrete

Concrete: Is a manufactured mixture of cement and water, with aggregates of sand and stones, which hardens rapidly by chemical combination to a stonelike, water-and-fire-resisting solid of great compressive but low tensile strength.

Reinforced concrete: Its a fusion between concrete and metal in order to add the tensile strength of steel to the compressive strength of mass concrete.The metal is embedded by being set as a mesh into the forms before pouring, and in the hardened material the two act uniformly. The combination is much more versatile than either product; it serves not only for constructing rigid frames but also for foundations, columns, walls, floors, and a limitless variety of coverings, and it does not require the addition of other structural materials. Although the making of forms is a slow and costly process, the technique competes economically with steel frame construction because the mesh, composed of thin, bendable metal rods or metal fabric, employs far less steel, and concrete is itself inexpensive.



Concrete-shell construction: It permits the erection of vast vaults and domes with a concrete and steel content, with this technique it can be reduce the thickness of the concrete needed to create a stable vault in comparison with the traditional methods.



Precast-concrete construction: It employs bricks, slabs, and supports made under optimal factory conditions to increase waterproofing and solidity, to decrease time and cost in erection, and to reduce expansion and contractions.



Prestressed concrete: It provides bearing members into which reinforcement is set under tension to produce a live force to resist a particular load. Since the member acts like a spring, it can carry a greater load than an unstressed member of the same size.

tilt-up and tiltwall are two terms used to describe the same process. For a tilt-up concrete building, the walls are created by assembling forms and pouring large slabs of concrete called panels directly at the job site. The panels are then tilted up into position around the building's slab. Because the concrete tiltwall forms are assembled and poured directly at the job site, no transportation of panels is required.

The precast concrete building process is similar to tilt-up construction, but it addresses the challenges presented by weather. For precast concrete buildings, work crews do not set up forms at the job site to create the panels. Instead, workers pre cast concrete panels at a large manufacturing facility. Because the precast concrete forms are poured indoors, this activity can take place regardless the weather conditions. After curing, the precast concrete panels are trucked to the job site. From this point, precast concrete buildings are assembled in much the same manner as tiltwall buildings.