The Agility Logistics Park in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has been under development since 2018. Since then, Bekaert has supplied the fibers for steel fiber reinforced flooring on no fewer than six dry storage warehouse projects, totaling 300,000 m2 of floorspace. These projects have involved several main contractors working on a ‘design and build’ basis: in most cases the flooring contractor has been Twintec Saudi Arabia.
As a market leader in steel fiber concrete flooring, Twintec was an early adopter, recommending jointless steel fiber floors rather than the traditional saw-cut SOG (slab on grade) approach. In such floors, increasing the proportion of fiber and specifying a high-performance material, eliminates the need to make cuts in the concrete surface to relieve stresses and cracking.
Bekaert carried out comprehensive calculations on both the slab design and the Total Cost of Ownership. This showed that a slightly higher initial material cost for their Dramix® 3D 80/60BG fibers was well outweighed over ±5 years by reduced ownership costs. With saw-cut “Control Joints”, the edges deteriorate over time due to heavy forklifts or other material handling equipment: repairing them is a cost and incurs downtime on that part of the facility. Also, saw-cuts, especially when damaged, impose significantly greater wear and tear on the truck fleet itself. So, the switch to jointless construction has a very positive effect on operating expenditure. Additionally, as a 100% fiber solution, use of rebar mesh – an all too common source of workforce injury – was totally eliminated.
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