Assembly of a spiral precast concrete staircase with segmental post-tensioning to reduce or remove the use of falsework

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the assembly process involved in building a precast concrete spiral staircase, intended to study the possible reduction or complete removal of falsework from its construction process. This study proposes a method of construction, where segmental post-tensioning is used to construct a spiral precast concrete staircase. This work highlights the post-tensioning technique used for the proposed method while performing a stress analysis of the staircase of the geometry on which the method will be tested. The proposed technique was first carried out on two expanded polystyrene models. A linear and a spiral stairway were assembled to observe any issues encountered during the construction process. Finally, this method was successfully applied to the assembly of a concrete spiral staircase. Hence this research concludes that applying such techniques would considerably reduce the amount of falsework required. The concluding chapters discuss observations of the proposed procedure, as well as highlight possible improvements.