ACI 549R-18 Report on Ferrocement

ACI 549R-18 Report on Ferrocement. Academic interest in ferrocement started to increase in the 1960s and 1970s with the work of Professor Surendra Shah and his team at the University of Chicago. Team member Antoine Naaman became a world leader and proponent for the material, and was instrumental in promoting research across the globe from his base at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. ACI Committee 549, “Thin Reinforced Cementitious Prod- ucts and Ferrocement,” was organized in 1974 and given the mission to study and report on the engineering properties, construction practices, and practical applications of ferroce- ment, and to develop guidelines for ferrocement construction. The frst international meeting on ferrocement was held during the 1978 ACI Convention in Toronto, ON, Canada. From this came SP-61. RILEM organized a Conference in Bergamo, Italy, in 1981 (ISMES 1981), but by the time the Second International Symposium on Ferrocement was held in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1985 (Austriaco et al. 1985), both the U.S. and European streams had come together. Subse- quent symposia have been held in Delhi, India (Kaushik and Gupta 1988); Havana, Cuba (Rivas 1991; Rivas et al. 2012); Manchester, UK (Nedwell and Swamy 1994); Ann Arbor, MI (Naaman 1998); Singapore (Mansur and Ong 2001); Bangkok, Thailand (Nimityongskul 2006); Bali, Indonesia (Djausal et al. 2009); and Aachen, Germany (Brameshuber 2015). 4.2—Reinforcements 4.2.1 Skeletal steel—If an armature is used, it is usually made of 0.25 to 0.375 in. (6 to 10 mm) diameter plain or ribbed steel bars, though bamboo or other natural products have been used in developing countries (Mansur and Aziz 1983; Nimityongskul and Chembi 1989; Hashim 2006). 4.2.2 Mesh—Finely divided mesh is the main reinforce- ment in ferrocement and what provides its unique proper- ties. The mesh may be made of steel, other metals, or be nonmetallic in nature. Nonmetallic meshes can include woven or laid scrim alkali-resistant (AR) glass fber fabrics, organic fber woven fabrics such as polypropylene, or woven or knitted aramid fbers (Brameshuber 2015). Tradi- tionally, the mesh was either square woven or welded mild steel, expanded metal lath, or hexagonal (avian) mesh. The various mesh types from diferent suppliers have diferent strengths and moduli. This can greatly afect the ultimate behavior and can afect the way the material cracks. Figures 4.2.2a through 4.2.2d show examples of diferent meshes. ACI 549R pdf download.