A close up photo of a screw fastening sitting on a block of concrete.

Case Studies

Upgrading Design Guidelines for Innovative Concrete Fasteners


More innovative concrete is coming onto the market, performing better and reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment. But guidelines for fasteners haven’t caught up, making it hard for designers and engineers to build with better concrete.

This project is developing standardised design guidelines to go into the revised Australian Standard for fasteners in concrete, supporting the uptake of innovative concrete.

Challenge

The construction industry is beginning to use products like high-performance concrete, steel fibre reinforced concrete, and low-carbon concrete made with supplementary cementitious materials. But one of the challenges of doing so is that engineers and architects don’t know whether fasteners for traditional concrete will work the same way for these innovative products.

Swinburne University Senior Lecturer and Project Researcher Dr Jessey Lee set the scene for the industry challenge.

“More and more innovative concrete—as we call it—are coming into the market,” Lee said. “And our buildings are becoming taller, 100 stories and more. They need stronger and more efficient, sustainable concrete.”

Currently, there are no guidelines for working with fasteners into innovative concrete. This forces those wishing to build with innovative concrete, and fastener manufacturers wishing to validate their products, to run performance tests on a case-by-case basis that can often be prohibitively expensive.

“The main challenge we are trying to address is to provide clearer guidance for the market on how to provide fixings into innovative concrete such as steel fibre reinforced concrete and very high strength concrete,” Lee said.

Fasteners connect things like elevators to elevator shafts and facades to main structures.

Objective

To find a solution, SmartCrete CRC brought together 6 industry and academic collaborators led by the Australian Engineered Fasteners and Anchors Council (AEFAC) and Swinburne University with guidance from fastener manufacturers such as Leviat.

The 3-year project will investigate whether traditional fasteners work in innovative concrete products and will update their designs if necessary. Researchers will conduct tests to arrive at designs for fasteners that perform well under normal conditions and earthquake conditions.

Leviat’s National Technical Manager Brett King described how the project will help industry work with better concrete.

“The biggest thing is safety in construction. It’s to make sure that the application is going to be installed correctly, that designers can use a methodology or use a standard that will give them a desirable outcome, preventing any failures,” King said.

The results will go towards the revised Australian Standard for fasteners – AS5216.

Impact

Leviat’s Global Design Engineering Lead Andreas Boomkamp said the project will help his business manufacture fasteners for innovative concrete and validate them for customers.

“People will come to us and say, How does your fastener behave in fibre concrete? And it is very hard to do testing for every single mix that is out there. It’s impossible. It would become very, very expensive. So with their knowledge, Swinburne will find out,” Boomkamp said.

“The testing isn’t cheap, so we really appreciate SmartCrete CRC coming in and helping us to cover the cost on that.”

Beyond these benefits for fastener manufacturers, having an Australian Standard to provide clear guidelines will allow the construction industry to more easily adopt the new, higher performing concrete products coming onto the market. Together, innovative concrete and improved fasteners will build stronger and longer-lasting buildings, which are therefore more cost-effective and safer.

Being able to build with less concrete, and with lower carbon concretes, will help the industry decarbonise in time for net zero by 2050. This helps concrete compete against building materials such as timber and steel, giving the industry and its workforce a future.

“We see the innovation coming in the concrete, and that’s where the opportunity lies to produce more efficient fasteners that work seamlessly with carbon neutral concrete to get cost savings for builders and designers and society as a whole. We’re saving energy. We’re saving materials. There are so many small benefits that I hope will add up and create greater benefits for the whole.” Boomkamp said.

Next steps

While this project does much of the groundwork for establishing technical guidelines for fasteners into innovative concrete, more work needs to be done. Together with the same partners, Swinburne University and AEFAC are investing in a sister SmartCrete CRC project to provide complementary guidelines on the fire performance of innovative concrete fasteners.

Researchers will conclude both projects by writing technical notes to be published by AEFAC on their website for use by, and feedback from, the sector. AEFAC then plans to pitch this to the Australian Standard in time for the anticipated 2028 review of the fasteners standard.

In this way, the study will produce the first Australian technical guidance for innovative concrete fasteners in normal and earthquake conditions. Engineers and designers will be able to refer to this guidance to work with innovative concrete and their fasteners within 5 years.

Project title

    Development of Design Guides for Advanced Fastenings into Innovative Concrete Products

 

3 years
Duration

 

$860,848
Value (Cash + In-Kind)

 

In progress
Status

Partners

  • Swinburne University of Technology
  • Leviat
  • Australian Engineered Fasteners and Anchors Council (AEFAC)
  • Hilti
  • Hobson Engineering
  • Ramset
  • Wurth Australia