About the author  ⁄ J. Benjamin Alper, P.E., S.E.

J. Benjamin Alper is an Associate at Severud Associates and serves as the Quality Control Officer for Severud Associates’ inspection services. He can be reached at JAlper@severud.com.

Times Square in New York is known for many things, including its Broadway Theaters, luxurious hotels, trendy retail, great entertainment venues, and flashy billboards. In the case of TSX Broadway (1568 Broadway), the project contains all these items in one building. What makes TSX Broadway truly special is not just that it contains all the elements of Times Square in one location. How existing elements were shifted, assembled, and juxtaposed with new elements makes this Entertainment complex and hotel tower a unique structural engineering feat.

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There are many issues that arise when one places mass concrete, specifically as it relates to reinforced concrete elements in buildings. These elements, which most typically include reinforced mat foundations, pile caps, footings, piers, and transfer elements, differ from other reinforced structures such as dams and retaining walls due to high stresses, quantities of steel reinforcement, and the use of high strength concrete. Mass concrete element placement in buildings, therefore, presents unique challenges.
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Discussions of cold and hot weather concrete procedures do not occur until the five-day forecast calls for extreme weather. At that point, everything becomes a rush.

Special concrete mixes, as required, need to be submitted for approval at the beginning of a project. Time is required to test and practice with different temperatures and dosages and to adjust the cocktail of admixtures that form the basis of high-performance concrete today.

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From Mix to Plant to Placement

Over the past decade, the use of high-strength concrete has gone from the exception to the norm. Uses of concrete strengths exceeding 10,000 psi are easily achievable on any building. The use of cold or hot weather concrete, high-performance concrete, self-consolidating concrete, architectural concrete, etc. is increasingly common, even for small projects.

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The Forum in Inglewood, California (also known as the Fabulous Forum) is an arena with a cable-suspended structure – not unlike a suspension bridge. There are 40 columns positioned equally on a 404-foot diameter circle that taper into precast concrete arches which support the 70-foot high compression ring. Forty cables, each 3 inches in diameter, one from each column, are strung from these columns to a central tension ring.
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At eight stories high and comprised of reinforced concrete flat plate construction (concrete slab without beams), the residential building at 653 Tenth Avenue in New York City boasts distinct features that make this building more than the average ‘flat plate’. These include a column free corner with cantilevers of up to 20 feet long and a large amount of exposed reinforced concrete structure, both of which were achieved with a structural slab of no more than 8 inches thick on the interior of the space.
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STRUCTURE magazine