Plastic Bubbles Lighten Concrete Deck

摘要

Although they probably will not realize it, the doctors and nurses who walk the corridors of the new Child, Adolescent and Women's Mental Health Building, in Vancouver, British Columbia, will be treading not on solid concrete but on a floor filled with hundreds of plastic balls. The hospital building, currently under construction, represents the first application in North America of a technology called BubbleDeck, which was established as an alternative to the solid concrete floor slab. The system aims to reduce structural weight and reap environmental benefits by embedding rows of hollow plastic balls inside concrete decks. The balls form voids in the concrete, thus reducing dead load without compromising biaxial strength.