Friday, 23 February 2018

Alvord Lake Bridge-Introducing Rebar To The World


What is Rebar?
The fascinating thing about Rebar is its tensile strength(capacity of a material to withstand loads). Reinforcing Bar commonly known as Rebar is a steel bar or sometimes a steel wire mesh used in reinforced concrete to provide it strength.

Alvord Lake Bridge
The first ever Rebar bridge was built in 1889 by Ernest L. Ransome(the inventor of Rebar structure). Alvord Lake Bridge is a tiny bridge crossing the pedestrian entrance to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in America. It is now a civil engineering landmark designated by American Society of Civil Engineers.
It is believed that Ransome used cold-twisted square steel bar for reinforcement placed length-wise in a single arch. It is 64 feet wide with a span of 20 feet. Today, it stands as a cracked, neglected structure with concrete deposits in its interior part that have grown in the later years after its construction.
In 1912, Ransome published a book named “Reinforced Concrete Buildings” in which he poured his bitterness about how his use of twisted Rebar was laughed down by the technical society of California. Frustrated by the community’s indifference, he left San Francisco thinking no one here would appreciate his invention of Rebar. Contrary to his thinking, the Alvord Lake Bridge survived the 1906 earthquake and fire justifying his initial faith in the method.
As dumpy as it may seem, the Alvord Lake Bridge is still an exemplary Rebar structure to the modern world. Being one of the oldest reinforced concrete structures, it is still serving as a model for all the Rebar structures that followed till date.



Rebar-Quite an Intricate Material
The problem with using Rebar is that it rusts. Even though it is used with concrete for providing strength, there remains a question to its sensitivity. When the reinforced steel rusts, its bonding with the concrete eventually breaks thus resulting in the swelling. A more advanced version of Rebar is epoxy coated Rebar developed to increase its longevity. When a Rebar structure is consistently exposed to natural surroundings as in the case of a highway system, it eventually gets rusted. Without regular maintenance, even the epoxy coated Rebar gets worn out.

Rebar Steel Detailing
Rebar Steel Detailing is the process of preparing technical drawings that address the quantity, placement, and bending shapes with dimensions of reinforcing steel. Rebar Steel Detailing is usually carried out by in-house Rebar fabricators or Rebar detailing companies. This process is critical to the construction of concrete structures as it provides the necessary strength to the building. It requires expert Rebar detailer with sound knowledge of the field to produce quality Rebar Detailing Drawings.

Our Company Synopsis
SteelConstruction Detailing Pvt. Ltd. is a technology driven company mastering in structural designing and detailing services. We offer a wide range of services from Rebar Steel Detailing, Rebar Detailing Drawings, Structural Drafting to Building Information Modeling. Due to increasing demand for cost-effective methodologies, we provide innovative techniques like tilt panel detailing. Our tilt panel detailing make it possible to develop sustainable panels for construction.

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