Engineering office

With good understanding of the Ductal® technology, design and engineering professionals strengthen their role with architects and building owners.

Upgrading of the Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain required construction of three new buildings with a load-bearing structure consisting of 24 steel columns, 16 meters high and 32 cm outside diameter. These load-bearing columns are reinforced with concrete cast inside the column. This project was the first to cast Ductal® in-place. Ductal® added compressive and flexural strength, ensuring stability of the load-carrying capacity and the entire column was filled in one pour. A special fire resistant formula was used to meet the structure design specification.

The Sakata Mirai footbridge was built to replace the former concrete bridge which has spanned the Niita River, in the Town of Sakata, for 40 years. Ductal®, used for the first time in Japan to build the new footbridge, enabled creation of one single span; 50 meters long and 2.4 meters wide. The deck is built of perforated precast elements to give the bridge better deformation resistance and less exposure to the wind.

Three new clinker silos were built to upgrade the Joppa cement manufacturing facility in Illinois, USA. Two of the silos had conventional steel roofing, whereas the third was completed with Ductal®. For this innovative roof, 24 precast panels, measuring 7.2 m long, 2.4 m wide and only 1.5 cm thick were assembled. Highly innovative design was applied in the silo roof, and the erection of the Ductal® roof took (11 days) compared to the steel roof of 35 days+. In addition, Ductal® provided excellent durability and impermeability, resistance to corrosion, abrasion and impact, reduced maintenance and longer life.

The pedestrian/bicycle bridge in Sherbrooke, Quebec (Canada), which crosses the Magog River, provided opportunity for early experimental use of Ductal® in 1997 ; and showcased the material’s true technical prowess. The use of Ductal® enabled construction of a single 60-meter long span only 3 cm thick, paving the way for the later use of Ductal® in long-span roofing. Three major technological innovations were realized with this project – the total absence of steel bar reinforcement, enabling the creation of thin, elegant structures (and enhancing urban landscape), use of small prestressed elements, and confinement of web member diagonals in stainless steel tubes.

The pedestrian bridge in Seonyu, also called the Bridge of Peace, was inaugurated in April 2002. It crosses the Han River, linking Sunyudo Island (a natural park) to the heart of the South Korean capital. This footbridge, designed by French architect Rudy Ricciotti, features an elegant, ultra-high performance concrete central arch 120 meters long and 4.3 meters wide. It is extremely thin, like a sail billowing between the two banks of land. This challenging artistic feat and technical prowess was made possible with Ductal®, which provided extreme fluidity to the lines of the deck where thickness does not exceed 3 cm. Ductal® enables such technical daring due to its superior compressive and flexural strengths and outstanding ductility.

Chryso, producer of admixtures and additives for the construction industry, in Sermaises (Loiret), built a 19-meter long, 1.6-meter wide walkway, entirely in Ductal®, for one of its warehouses. The footbridge, built of three precast elements with no reinforcement, sits on steel pillars, 3-meter high, which are independent of the surrounding structure.

Ductal® replaced the original design which called for steel and wood, offering six times greater load resistance than required standards, with a deck that is only 8 cm thick. The Ductal® solution also provided outstanding fire resistance required for a storage warehouse that contains large quantities of chemical products.

Inspired by a steel sculpture designed in the 1930’s by brothers Jean and Noël Martel, the Martel Tree was commissioned by the city of Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) and made by architect Marc Mimram. This 8.50-meter high sculpture was entirely made from Ductal® and represents a true artistic and technical feat.

Ductal®‘s intrinsic qualities were exploited to provide for the complex process of attaching the leaves - some of which were only 6 cm thick – to the tree trunk.

Ductal®’s outstanding stain resistance was combined with a specific treatment to ensure great durability and exceptional whiteness for this magnificent sculpture installed out of doors.

The Shawnessy LRT Station in, Calgary (Canada) provides an excellent demonstration of Ductal®’s ability to facilitate unique, innovative creations. Twenty-four white, ultra-thin curved shell-shaped canopies (just 20 mm thick) protect passengers from the elements, and enhanced lighting to the platforms below.
The station, was designed by architect Enzo Vicenzino (CPV Group Architects & Engineers Ltd.). Ductal® was used to build the canopies, struts, columns, beams and rain gutters.

The result – amazing artistic creativity and significantly stronger structural strength, validated by the Center for Innovative Technology at the University of Calgary. The extremely durable canopies are also easy to clean and require very little maintenance.

Combining aesthetics and performance was the ambitious objective for the acoustic panels on the underground rail station in the Principality of Monaco. The station walls had to be faced with lightweight, thin acoustic panels with perforations to trap the noise reverberation. In addition to the demanding aesthetics and acoustic performances, the panels also had to stand up to outside elements, in particular, graffiti.

Ductal® met all of the constraints. Due to the material’s extremely fine components, holes measuring only 1.5 cm² were created when the material was cast, facilitating the absorption of the noise and diffusing it toward the underlying rockwool. In addition, the Ductal® panels, which measured an average of 2.30 m by 1.80 m, with 20-mm thickness in the solid areas and 15-mm thickness in the perforated areas.

The panels are nonflammable, were easy to install and provide highly aesthetic surroundings for the station and its users.

Due to the development of cracks which reduced the load capacity by half and thus restricted its storage capacity, one of the reinforced concrete clinker silos in la Couronne (Charente) required renovation. For this purpose, 216 stanchions and 384 trussed panels, made in varying thicknesses with Ductal®, connected by steel cable, were installed on the silo walls. Ductal® was selected for its ability to meet the demands for abrasion resistance, and to solve the constraints of light weight and durability in an extremely harsh environment, where the clinker temperature can reach 400 degrees, with a 200 degree temperature difference on either side of the walls.