SOME SPECIFIC FEATURES OF RESOURCE SAVING IN CONSTRUCTION

Abstract

The Republic of Belarus possesses a limited number of important natural resources and their conservation is considered as one of the strategic directions for the development of construction industry. Regularities in resource saving can be used not only for cost-cutting at the expense of cheaper materials with worse properties but they can also be used under certain specific conditions for price formation through selection of expensive qualitative construction materials and products. Thus an analysis of changes in concrete price due to higher compressive strength has shown that the price per one concrete cubic metre is increasing much more slowly than an increase in strength. For this reason high-performance concrete is more advantageous in comparison with lowand medium-strength concrete. New comparative units for strength and other physical properties have been proposed for assessment of resource efficiency: unit price (in case of being used) and cost price (in case of being manufactured) make it possible to compare various materials and products and such approach is necessary while using steel tube confined concrete (STCC) structures in construction. Estimates suggest that high-strength concrete and tubes with minimum thickness of walls withstanding lateral pressure of a core which is deformed under load must be applied for STCC structures under normal operational conditions. In this context it is necessary to use damping devices for compensation of difference in characteristics of concrete and tube material and these devices ensure maximum safe load of concrete core and tube material.

Keywords

• resource saving
• price
• high-performance concrete
• tube concrete
• tube
• deformation characteristics
• damping device
• maximum safe load