REINFORCED CONCRETE.

Evening Star, Issue 12764, 17 March 1906, Page 5

REINFORCED CONCRETE.

DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING. One of the most striking developments of modern cj.vil engineering is the utilisation of concrete, reinforced with steel, for purposes for which wood, stone, brick, steel, and iron, together or separately, have hitherto been employed. A notable work in reinforced concrete is now in progress in Auckland in the new railway wharf. The process is simplicity itself. Reinforced concrete is nothing more nor less than a concrete body, with steel bones. _ The framework is wrought in steel, which is placed in a mould, and the wet concrete is rammed all round it. The work is allowed to set, and is dropped into its place into the main structure; provision is made for the attachment of the part to the structure, with which it is bonded, and the whole becomes, not a collection of individual piles, a series of walls, or a procession of girders, but one monolithic or "one-stone" structure. In short, a reinforced concrete church or bridge is as much in one piece as an earthenware basin, bnt with this difference : that any fracture can be repaired, any broken portion replaced so as to make the original work aa sound visibly and actually as it was originally. From an article appearing in the 'New Zealand Herald' of the 14th inst., it is made apparent that the uses of reinforced concrete are not oonfined> to wharf consfcrnction only. There is running on the

Seine a steam laimoh' CPete, while ,a new chapel built for the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis is another instance of the bold use of reinforced concrete. Frother, several large buildings in. England and on the Continent have been elected, out of the material, and it is also capable of utilisation for straining-posts" for wire fencing, rails, posts, gates, floors for cattle-pens, railway sleepers, etc.