JOINTS IN REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

(ASSIGNMENT – II)

SUBMITTED BY – SUBMITTED TO –

JASKIRAT ARORA (1731681) AR. DAMANDEEP KAUR

PARDEEP SINGH (1731683)

JOINTS IN REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS

Joints –

Concrete is strong in compression and weak in tension that’s why we use reinforcement for
high tensile strength. The added content of the concrete makes it incredible in strength.

However, due to the temperature and time, the material starts to deteriorate and expand
timely. From cement to bars every material will be affected by the temperature and changes
its volume. Any structure that comes into direct contact will affect by this.

That’s the reason why we provide different types of construction joints to withstand the
volume change (except control joint).

1. Contraction / Control Joint

2. Construction Joint
3. Expansion Joint
4. Isolation Joint

Contraction Joints –

Once the concrete gets poured and hardened, the water in it starts to evaporate and makes
the concrete to shrink and develop shrinkage cracks, especially on longer slabs. Contraction or
Control joints are provided to avoid this crack from developing to the entire area.

Purpose of Control Joints

Basically, control joint is the action of making a saw cut groove and weaken the slab where we
think the crack may occur due to shrinkage (Mostly at the middle of the slab). 
This way the cracks developed under the slab find its way at the weak point (the point we
have grooved) and avoid spreading all over the slab.

Construction Joints –

In a day we only pour a certain amount of concrete and leave the rest to the next day even
though it all act as one complete structure for load transfer. Construction joints are used to
strengthen the unit and make it as one whole unit.
That means we purposefully make the concrete pour in certain shapes and stages like shown
in below. So that the next fresh set of concrete will blend together with the older one and act
as one whole unit. This is known as construction joint.

Expansion Joints –

Expansion Joint on the other hand, as we told earlier, the materials gets expand due to
temperature. If we construct the adjacent structure without providing expansion joint then
the volume change will affect the adjacent structure and gets it disfigured. Makes the whole
structure collapsed.

Purpose of Expansion Joints

Providing expansion joints makes room for the structure to allow moving or expanding
according to their properties. These gaps will be filled by some allowable materials such as
bitumen or fibreboard. We can see these mainly at Bridge decks and sometimes in a long set
of building units constructed very closely.
Isolation Joints –

Joints that isolate the slab from a wall, column or drainpipe

Isolation joints have one very simple purpose—they completely isolate the slab from
something else. That something else can be a wall or a column or a drain pipe. Here are a
few things to consider with isolation joints:

Walls and columns, which are on their own footings that are deeper than the slab subgrade,
are not going to move the same way a slab does as it shrinks or expands from drying or
temperature changes or as the subgrade compresses a little.