General contractor and long-time partner of Bekaert, Barton Malow, constructed a 256,100 ft² (23 792m²) concrete slab at a General Motors plant in Arlington, Texas. This expansive 8” thick, steel fiber reinforced slab was done in one continuous pour over a span of 33 hrs. To date, it is the largest finished floor in the world. The project was also awarded a Golden Trowel for flatness & levelness and ultra large laser screed slab.
Tom Binkowski, director concrete Self Perform with Barton Malow talks about the challenges of taking on such massive project and his experience working with Dramix® steel fiber concrete reinforcement.
“To meet the scheduled completion date, we made the decision to finish the job in one massive pour instead of multiple 20,000 ft² placements, which is a more typical approach. Finishing operations involved nearly 33 consecutive hours of placing, raking, leveling, troweling, and sawing. To get this done, many staff, equipment, materials and vehicles were at the ground, at all times.”
“To make the project run as smooth as possible, we decided to use steel fiber concrete reinforcement. Using Dramix® helped us achieve the required structural yield of 2% and thickness of 8”, and we didn’t have to put extra time and materials into placing rebar. We had more space to move around and ultimately needed fewer men to complete the job. All of these benefits resulted in a reduced project cost of approximately 15%.
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