Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) large scale test facility at Cardington

LENNON, T.
Whole Building Behaviour–Results from a series of Large Scale Tests

...está considerado como el mayor laboratorio del mundo que permite realizar ensayos sobre el fuego y el comportamiento estructural de edificios a escala real. En 1993 se construyó en el interior del hangar un edificio con estructura de acero de 8 plantas (tiene una longitud de 45 metros, una anchura de 21 metros y una altura de 32 metros). Posteriormente se construyó un edificio de entramado ligero de madera de seis plantas, que tiene el nombre de TF 2000 (Timber Frame 2000 = Entramado de madera 2000). Actualmente (1998) se está terminando la construcción de otro edificio de hormigón de siete plantas.

Laboratorio de ensayos Cardington
Revista AITIM julio agosto de 1998. Infomadera

Building Research Establishment [ Infomadera ]

Concrete Frame Undergoes Crash Trial

The in-situ building is part of the European Concrete Building Project which was set up by the key industry partners BCA, CONSTRUCT, RCC and BRE ...

The building has been designed and constructed to represent a typical office building. It is seven storeys high and is cast as a in-situ reinforced concrete frame. In plan it is 4 bays long by 3 bays wide. Each bay is 7.5m square. The floor slabs are 250mm thick. The internal columns range in size from 400mm to 500mm by 2500mm and the external columns measure 400mm by 250mm. The decision to design the test structure as a typical building enabled engineers to carry out real life testing the results of which provide practical and meaningful design and construction guidance...

Best Practice Guides

A number of Best Practice Guides concerning the construction process of the in-situ building at Cardington have been published. These include:

• Rationalisation of Reinforcement
Provides recommendations for the efficient and economic reinforcement of concrete flat slabs.
• Improving Concrete Frame Construction
Shows how the lean manufacturing approach used by successfully by the other industries can be adopted for construction with potential cycle floor time savings of 30% and man hour savings of 45%.
• Improving Rebar Information and Supply
Provides a more efficient approach to information flow throughout the rebar supply chain improvement of which will speed up the design process, reduce lead times, reduce potential for error and reduce waste.
• Concreting for Improved Speed and Efficiency
Provides the results of the first ever study concerned with concrete optimisation within the context of the overall construction business process.
• Early Age Strength Assessment of Concrete
Offers recommendations for determining the early age strength of concrete using the Lok-test system and pull-out inserts.

In-situ strength testing during construction
Prof. A.E. Long, Prof. J. Bungey (Univ. of Liverpool), Dr. M. Soutsos (Univ. of Liverpool), Prof. P.A.M. Basheer and Dr. G. Henderson

The research at Cardington undertook comparative site studies during the construction of a seven storey in-situ building – the first of four concrete frame buildings to be built as part of the European Concrete Building Project. For floors one and two, the generic types of propriety formwork and falsework used were a prop and timber beam system. For floors three and four a aluminium flying table system was used. A skeletal steel system with aluminium beams was used for floors five and six. The roof used an aluminium frame system as formwork. For each formwork system, easy of delivery, speed of construction, safety and the number of required operatives were monitored and compared. The findings of the on-site research are incorporated in the guide. The research project was led by CONSTRUCT together with the University of Birmingham, University of Leeds and the Building Research Establishment. Funding was provided by the DETR through the Partners in Technology programme.

New Guide shows way forward for formwork

Fire Test

• Test Data: Cardington Fire Test
  The Behaviour of a Multi-storey Steel Framed Building Subjected to Fire Attack Experimental Data
  by British Steel plc, 1998

• Halcrow
  Structural response - Cardington Fire Tests
  client: BRE / country: United Kingdom / year: 1994-1996

Bibliografía LENNON, T. (2003) Precast Hollowcore slabs in fire BRE Electronic Publications " two full-scale fire tests were carried out at BRE’s Large Building Test Facility at Cardington " Artículos CHANA, Pal; PRICE, Bill Cardington fire test, The Concrete, Jan 2003 Gert van den Berg, Joris Fellinger, Pascal Steenbakkers, Ton van Overbeek Multi-storey steel framed buildings under natural fire conditions HERON, Vol. 50, No 4 (2005) Y. C. Wang An analysis of the global structural behaviour of the Cardington steel-framed building during the two BRE fire tests The Manchester School of Engineering, University of Manchester Abstract ScienceDirect Ponencias Structural fire Engineering Database Cardington Colin Bailey Holistic behaviour of concrete buildings in fire Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Structures and Buildings 152, August 2002 LENNON, T. Whole Building Behaviour–Results from a series of Large Scale Tests Proceedings of the CIB-CTBUH International Conference on Tall Buildings, 8-10 May 2003, Malaysia Tesis KIRKWOOD CAMERON, Neil John The Behaviour and Design Composite Floor Systems in Fire University of Edinburgh (2003)

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