The Substance That Makes Your Building Stronger When You Cover the Columns

Building a solid building, as you can imagine, isn’t just about laying a few bricks on top of each other, it’s a job that requires a lot of effort, attention and care.

Similarly, some of the discussion topics that took up the agenda after the February 6 earthquakes were “Which construction materials were used in the destroyed buildings?” and “What materials would not have happened if they were used?” discussions. However, the solution to this problem may lie in simple materials such as carbon fiber, which is a thin, materially viable and flexible construction material.

Carbon fiber, also known as “Carbon Fiber” or “CFRP”/”FRP”, is a cladding material often used in columns and beams to strengthen buildings against earthquakes.

Carbon fiber, whose main functions are to increase the load bearing capacity of the structure, to ensure its strength and to increase the resistance of the foundation against dynamic power, is applied to the parts of the same structure that are exposed to the highest weight and external forces in the form of fibrous texturing that will not increase the weight of the structure much. These selected fibrous textures are almost as thin as a shirt fabric.

Another reason for this preference is that carbon fiber fabric has the advantage of greater flexibility and resistance compared to tough but heavy materials such as steel. In other words, it becomes a more resistant material thanks to its greater flexibility. In particular, its resistance to tensile is 14 times that of steel. To give a similar example, it is more difficult to tear a rope than to break a board. This is also due to the extra resistance provided by flexibility.

When we say “covering material”, let’s emphasize that this is indeed its function and that it is possible to strengthen structures with just such a coating.

These carbon fiber coatings, which seem like ordinary coatings at first, prevent the building and its parts from moving further during severe shocking disasters such as earthquakes.

Imagine that in a very critical part of a building there is a piece of column that is not securely attached to the rest of the building. This piece will undoubtedly move during the tremors caused by the earthquake and will drop all the pieces it encounters with itself. This is because the parts that will come across are not flexible enough and are not well fixed. But if you place a more flexible and harder-to-pass material, such as carbon fiber, in front of this piece, you can make it impossible for it to move.

This type of coating, which is generally used in the foundations of buildings, is also practical and compact enough to be used in other parts of it depending on the situation. In short, it can be placed anywhere in a building when needed.

As with all other important steps in construction, good preparation is essential for smooth placement of the carbon fiber on the surface. For this, a very meticulous procedure is applied, which follows more or less this order:

After determining the surface of one of the round concrete pillars, book or rectangular pillars, concrete square pillars or precast concrete pillars:

1. The surface on which the veneer will be placed is chipped or smoothed.
2. The edges and corners of the surface, if any, are chamfered.
3. Dust and small residues that emerged in the previous steps are cleaned.
4. The thickness of the surface is measured and the layers below the surface are examined.
5. The reinforcements of the surface are examined.
6. The surface is brushed with a sticky substance.
7. The carbon fiber is placed on the adhesive with great care.

The method is also famous for successfully passing robustness tests.

The above example is from an earthquake simulation performed at Istanbul Technical University.

In this simulation experiment, one of two identical buildings is sheathed in carbon fiber. A shocking force with an earthquake strength of 7.3 is applied to both buildings. While the building covered with carbon fiber does not collapse and remains intact, the building that is not covered with carbon fiber collapses without much resistance.

Due to the strength it provides, carbon fiber coating can be used in construction with methods such as the dilatation joint method, which we have discussed in detail in the following articles, and technologies such as seismic isolator:

In summary, as long as you stick to a certain procedure and reinforce certain areas with carbon fiber coatings, you can prevent even large buildings from collapsing with these coatings, the thickness of which will not exceed the thickness of a shirt and will not cost much financially.