Concrete Densification and Polishing | Durable Industrial Flooring by Durafloor

JOINTLESS SFRC FLOOR

The latest in concrete flooring technology is the design and pouring of jointless floors using Steel Fiber Reinforment and Laser Screeding Technology. This technology is still a pretty new concept to the INDIAN market and DURAFLOOR aims to educate the market on the benefits of installing a jointless concrete floor.

Jointless floors are built using large area construction methods. The word jointless can be misleading, as there is a practical upper limit to the area of concrete that can be placed in a single continuous operation. No joints are sawn, but steel fibres incorporated into the concrete mix control the width and distribution of cracks caused by shrinkage. It is not usually possible to guarantee that there will be no visible cracks in the floor. Therefore, performance criteria with regard to the width and frequency of cracks should be established.

A benefit of jointless floors to the building user is the opportunity of having relatively large areas of floor with no joints. However, the formed free-movement joints at the edges of each area will be wider than in floors with multiple sawn joints and will typically open by 20 mm. Jointless concrete floors, reinforced with steel fibers are modern high-quality alternative to traditional concrete floors with saw cut joints.

Usually about a jointless floor we talk when the distance between joints is at least 12 m and under certain conditions it can reach 45-50 m. In practice, this means that it is possible to lay a concrete floor with area up to 2500 m2 without saw cut joints!

When making jointless floors the fields are limited and shaped using factory produced special profiles for dilatation joints with dowels installed and integrated protection of the edges of the joint. The dowels contribute to the load transfer between the two neighbouring fields and allow opening of the joint due of shrinkage or temperature differences up to 30 mm.

By replacing traditional welded mesh reinforcement with high-end structural steel fibers the loading bearing capacity of the floor increases significantly thus achieving greater control over the cracks. It is possible to make a jointless field of large bay areas because the steel fibers “bridge” the cracks that form in the concrete and prevent their further “opening” into larger cracks.