Course Constructive Anchors

In a structural engineering course, much attention is paid to load-bearing strength calculations of concrete and steel structures, but hardly any mention is made of the structural connections between the concrete and/or steel. To fill that 'gap', the Concrete Association, in cooperation with the well-known A-brands in fasteners, provides the course Constructive Anchors. On the one hand to create awareness, but mainly to increase knowledge about constructive anchor connections so that they are better applied and construction becomes safer and more reliable.

ITSOs, or pour-in facilities, are still too often seen as a closing item, notes Richard van der Ham, Technical Sales Advisor at Mastermate and also lecturer of the Constructive Anchors course. "Anchors account for less than 1% of a project's total budget. In a 5,000 euro precast element, often only a few tens of dollars' worth of lifting anchors go into it." His fellow lecturer Niels Arendsen can also confirm this. He works in daily life as a Technical Advisor at Hilti and says, "Millions of euros are spent during the construction of a project, but then when something has to be secured, it shouldn't cost anything. With the course we try to create awareness so that structural engineers appreciate the risks and make the right trade-offs for a correct connection."

Think about what you want to confirm! What are things that are important in fastening? What about dimensional tolerances? Is the joint located inside or outside? What material is it going to be made of? What is the expected service life. Is the load variable or static? And equally underexposed, especially with structural anchors: What about fire resistance? All aspects that influence the choice of anchorage. "In theory you can come up with all kinds of things, but practice often turns out very differently. People on the construction site are quite creative. A solution is always found, but whether it is constructively sound is questionable," Arendsen says. "It is the job of whoever designs an anchorage to take into account the unruliness in execution. In other words, that the design is and remains feasible. Otherwise you will make things very difficult for the execution and the chances of things going wrong are very high." Van der Ham: "In the course, we make it especially clear why basic knowledge from a practical point of view is so important, with the experience of the A-brands in fasteners on the Dutch market." 

"Some contractors think they have more of a grip the moment an anchor is retrofitted, others are like 'let's pour it in ahead of time, because then I won't have a hassle on site.' It's the same among structural engineers," Arendsen knows. "Applying an anchor in advance gives more opportunities to channel the load to the reinforcement and achieve a different failure behavior, than when applying it afterwards. In the latter case, you always have a short anchor, which is characterized by a brittle way of failure without notice. Whereas if a collapse anchor with a long bar goes over the design load, the structure slowly cracks and eventually fails. This is often the reason structural engineers prefer a collapse anchor." 

The Structural Anchors course provides a clear picture of what is involved in the design and installation of anchor connections. Inaccuracy can lead to a significant reduction in strength, with all the consequences that entails. "In complex steel construction, a lot of attention is paid to the anchor connections, but in traditional residential and commercial construction it is still seen primarily as practical reinforcement," Van der Ham notes. The gentlemen are pleased with the fact that the calculation method of anchors has been cast in a standard and is part of Eurocode 2, making it an obligation instead of a fairly non-committal guideline. And with the advent of the Quality Assurance Act (Wkb), the contractor must also be accountable. This will better safeguard the choice of anchor types in the future.

The Concrete Association's Constructive Anchors course is consistently rated four stars on a scale of five. The same goes for the lecturers, with more than one hundred years of experience in anchoring. In four half-days, you will gain insight into the various anchor systems that can be applied before and after, discuss how to deal with quality assurance and the assessment guideline(s), and cover the behavior of anchor connections. You will learn to read/understand reports from the relevant calculation programs and how to calculate an anchor with the available calculation software. Also the influence of reinforcement and geometric effects on the capacity of anchor connections will be discussed and calculations of failure mechanisms according to EC2 will be made. Proof of participation in this course will earn you 9 KE/PE points for the Register of Engineers. A new series starts again on September 19. You can register via the Concrete Association website.