Trade Journals for the Concrete Industry

… the load-bearing structure and integrated building technical services Up to now, criteria for utilising steel reinforced precast elements have revolved exclusively around load-bearing capacity. In future, other properties will also have to be taken into account in design engineering. Besides its great load-bearing capacity, steel reinforced concrete possesses outstanding potential as a material for storing thermal energy and then releasing it in delayed action to the surroundings. This property is known by the term: “Building Component Activation” (BCA). An increasing number of building technical service components will in future be built into construction components in conjunction with this property. Prefabrication is virtually predestined for the successful implementation of these new challenges. However, it is important to plan holistically and be aware of mutual influences under these boundary conditions. It means that structural details should be designed whilst taking diverse inserted components into account. These can, in turn, exert an influence on computations. In the following, correlations in multi-functional construction work will be illustrated using the example of a hall structure made from prefabricated concrete elements. In this case, properties, such as load-bearing capacity, thermal energy storage and energy distribution, should be coordinated in over-arching planning.