The first session of Spring semester was held on February 25th, starting with the introduction of the new SEAoT officers, goals and prizes allocated for attendees, and plans for the future meetings in this semester.
The session went on with the presentation of Rob Kinchler from Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute (CRSI) about emerging trends in reinforced concrete. He discussed many interesting aspects ranging from the products of CRSI to the state-of-the-art reinforced concrete construction techniques. CRSI publications include and are not limited to the introductory to in-depth guidance and reference information on commonly used applications such as manuals, design guides, industry standards, research reports, and ACI 318 building code requirements. CRSI’s website was introduced and Rob explained how to join the CRSI website as students through its membership form.
The new reinforced constructions were introduced along with their challenges and benefits such as voided slabs, sonotube void, insulated concrete form, site cast forming, tunnel forming, RediCor, and holeDeck. Rob discussed the benefits of high strength reinforcement, headed rebar, and galvabar. Some of the new construction trends explained through the meeting were BIM application in computer modeling, 3D printing, drone mapping (which has a lot of benefits such as site progress history development and site mapping), self-consolidating concrete, and self-monitoring sensors.
Rob discussed the significance of sustainability and related construction techniques. The discussion went on with the selection of construction materials with the focus on carbon capturing and thermal breaks.
Architectural trends and market trends were also discussed. Some of the examples were exposed structural design, using glass, etc.
At the end of the session, Q & A was held and active participants asked their questions.
In this session, we had 18 participants, who all received a SEAoT token. Shagun Satish Nevatia and Daniel Duke won the ACI-318 design code provided by CRSI and Eric Polson won the SEAoT T-shirt.
The second SEAoT general meeting takes place on March 4th hosting Kiewit corporation.
Lastly, I want to ask companies interested in presenting on the topic of building structural start-up/small businesses to email me at Aghajani.mo@tamu.edu for further collaboration.
