[Bell Historians] Steelwork into masonary

[Andrew Higson]

As in most professions, there is a range of abilities, for want of a
better word, in the world of the architect. There are those whose
opinion and recommendations you would trust entirely and also those who
insist on their own way irrespective of best practice and the advice of
the trade. King's Lynn and Kevedon fall into the latter category.
 
What do you do? It is inevitable and understandable that the bellhanger
is the one that gets the blame but we are not the ones with letters
after our name taking the fees for our advice!

Andrew Higson 
Taylors Eayre and Smith Ltd 
The Bellfoundry 
Freehold Street 
Loughborough 
LE11 1AR 
Telephone: 01509 212241 Fax: 01509 263305 
Registered in England No. 1352309 

-----Original Message-----
From: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Povey
Sent: 22 February 2007 20:42
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] Steelwork into masonary




Burying steelwork in masonry is fundamentally very dodgy.
There is a lousy thermal miss match causing differential expansion
problems. 

Rod Bickerton, 22/2/07

Sorry, Rod, this is untrue. Perhaps surprisingly, there is a close
similarity between concrete/stone/brickwork coefficients of expansion
and mild steel. It's why we can embed steel in concrete to make
reinforced-concrete. If the CoEs were very different, the steel would
either expand at a greater rate than the concrete as temperature
increased, causing it to buckle and crack the concrete, or the opposite,
which would pre-load the steel and make it fail early. The following
coefficients of expansion (taken from Kempe's Engineers Year Book) will
illustrate the point:-

mild steel: CoE 11.0 x 10-6
concrete: CoE 13.0 x 10-6
 
For comparison: copper 16.3 x 10-6 and aluminium 23.0 x 10-6
 
Concrete actually expands fractionally more than steel. 
 
(Did some work on this a few years ago and obtained CoEs for masonry and
brickwork, but can't turn them up now. They were similar to concrete -
which is effectively stonework anyway.)
 
Steel beams embedded in tower walls have no problem thermally. Actually,
the temperature inside a tower rises comparatively little compared to
the outside temperature, because it's in the shade. On this basis there
are potentially more thermal expansion problems within the walls
themselves, from what can be a substantial temperature difference
between the inside and out faces - but they seem to cope quite happily.
 
The problems at Kings Lynn and Kelvedon have, I believe, much more to do
with some quite different fundamentals of burying steelwork in masonry.
 
Chris Povey


 

 
           
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