RHU MS civil engineering student Nour El Deen El Ezz and the Chairperson of the Civil Engineering Department, Dr. Zaher Abou Saleh, presented and published a technical paper titled " Experimental Evaluation of Friction Losses between Post Tensioned Strands and Plastic Ducts" at the 3rdGeoMeast 2019 International Congress and Exhibition held between November 10 and 14 in Cairo, Egypt.
The paper investigates the possibility of using plastic ducts instead of steel ducts in Post-Tensioned concrete slabs. “Lebanon has suffered from the burning of garbage, especially plastic, in the last decade. As engineers are fully responsible to take care of the environment, we applied the concept of recycling plastic garbage in structural engineering. We can recycle the plastic garbage to produce plastic ducts to be used in the Post-Tensioned concrete systems,” said Mr. El Ezz.
Plastic ducts better reduce the friction losses in the Post-tensioned systems in comparison with steel ducts. They are also corrugated ducts in order to assure the bond between the ducts and the concrete.