Stable Joints for Concrete Floors: Differential movement versus load-transfer efficiency

Pavement engineers, who deal with many of the same issues faced in the concrete-floor field, do not talk much about joint stability or differential movement. Instead, they talk about load-transfer efficiency—a related but distinct property. Whenever a load is applied to one side of a joint, it creates stress on the loaded side. Load transfer occurs when some of that stress gets transferred to the unloaded side. Load transfer efficiency (LTE) is a measure of how well the joint shifts stress to the unloaded side.

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Stable Joints for Concrete Floors: A new standard

A stable joint—one that does not move excessively when a load is applied near it—is obviously better than an unstable one. However, the best methods to make joints stable are not always agreed upon. For example, one floor designer might call for stout, closely spaced dowels, while another also chooses dowels, but makes them thinner and spaces them farther apart.

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Advancing energy-efficient timber façades

The building industry consumes 40 per cent of the world’s energy, and is responsible for more than 38 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to studies completed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD 2009). The energy demand and its costs will continue to increase; this explains why Canadian building code requirements are becoming more stringent.

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Team Touch takes CSC’s student design competition

At the CSC Conference in Kitchener last month, a student competition to renovate the Galt Post Office (an actual heritage building) with a hypothetical restaurant let emerging design professionals to show their skills with architecture, building materials, and construction documentation. Hosted by the association’s Grand Valley, Hamilton/Niagara, and Toronto Chapters, the contest was won by ‘Touch’—the team of Sheldon Froc, Evelyn (Shuang) Wang, and Emma Kamermans.

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Canadian Museum for Human Rights: Project details

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is rooted in humanity, making visible in the architecture the fundamental commonality of humankind—a symbolic apparition of ice, clouds, and stone set in a field of sweet grass. Carved into the earth and dissolving into the sky on the Winnipeg horizon, the abstract ephemeral wings of a white dove embrace a mythic stone mountain of 450-million-year-old Tyndall limestone in the creation of a unifying and timeless landmark for all nations and cultures of the world.

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