The Sika Experience

Sika Brazil was present from October 8^th to 11^th, to the 54^th Brazilian Concrete Congress held in Maceió, Alagoas.

This event was promoted by the Brazilian Concrete Institute – IBRACON and established itself as the largest Brazilian technical forum for discussions on concrete technology and its building systems. The event aims to disclose annually the news in terms of scientific research, technology and innovation in structural analysis and design, construction methods, building materials and their properties, management and technical standardization, and others aspects related to industrial material most consumed in the world.

A lot of students during the contest

During IBRACON, there is a contest aimed at students, called the “Egg Protection”. The goal is to encourage students to design and build a piece of plain concrete or reinforced concrete, a portico, called the Egg Apparatus Protection, which is the most resistant to impact load imposed on it. This load is composed of a metallic cylinder with a diameter of 50 mm (weighing 10 kgf in the first stage and the second stage 15 kgf). The cylinder falls from increasing heights (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 m), clashing with the upper surface of the apparatus. The competition stimulates students to reflect on the safety of structures, in that the egg is human life under the gantry of concrete.

Sika´s stand and Fernando Bueno

Due to the contest Egg Protection, there is a very large number of students in the Brazilian Concrete Congress. This was the reason tha Sika Brazil took Fernando Bueno, winner of Sika Experience (June, 2012) to tell personally to the students how was your experience in the competition.

We dedicated a space in our Stand, driven to the Sika Experience, and Sika Brazil developed a specific leaflet on the subject as well, we got a room during lectures to promote our contest for, both, students and for several professors who went to the event demanding innovations and new technologies.

Fernando Bueno showed the Sika Experience

We expect to increase the number of brazilian student registrations for the contest Sika Experience, touting the brand strength Sika and promoting our products and solutions ;-)

Day 2 & 3 passed in a blink of an eye…..

The 2nd day of Sika concrete experience started with a lovely sunny morning. Oliver picked us up for an hour road journey to Kichberg where a Sika admixtures plant is located at. We met Walter there and he explained the production of concrete admixtures from raw materials to the final products ready to be transported throughout Switzerland. We were quite impressed with the automated approach that has enabled such a scale to operate by less than 10 crews.

In the afternoon, we headed back to Sika BU concrete office in Zurich and worked on SCC mix design. It was quite a bit of a challenge as we have to strike the balance between targeted performance and the cost incurrence. The software developed by Sika came handy but the mix design for SCC does require understanding on the individual material properties and their relationships in the composition. It was a good exercise as we realise the difficulties in hindsight. Credit to Oliver for sharing his technical know-how in this.

We then went to Widen and had a tour in Aliva-Sika workshop where all the fabrication and manufacturing of Sika machines such as pumps, dosing units, concrete spraying systems and etc are taking place. In fact, before this, I did not know that Sika is producing mechanical products. These guys in Aliva can virtually fabricate all sorts of part that would meet the clients’ requirements. Brilliant. The day was ended with a gratifying moment at typical Swiss dinner.

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This morning (3rd Day), we went to the Weinberg tunnel project site in Zurich with Juerg. It was an interesting and a challenging job site as it is located below a dense part of Zurich. Among many other major constraints for this project were the tunnel passage under Limmat river and the logistics for burrow materials. Essentially impermeable concrete is required and no prize for guessing which company plays this pivotal role. Thanks Andreas for the insight!

From the SCC mix design that we came out yesterday, we finally have the chance to test it at the laboratory in the afternoon. The first trial was lack of cohesiveness and the flow slump was slightly lower than what we have expected. We made an adjustment by adding more water and superplasticizer (Viscocrete 25MP) which had yielded better outcome. The density of the fresh concrete that we got was relatively good and it also indicates the self-compacting was working. Oliver was kind enough to demonstrate the use of Sika stabilizer admixture that improves the characteristics of SCC when it is really necessary.

We’ve got our free time for the evening and we have arrived at a common consensus to dine in an Italian restaurant and had a couple of drinks. Its pretty late and I have to stop for now as we have to get up early tomorrow for a trip to Lucerne. Good night :)

Alex

Today we visited the Weinberg Tunnel site. It was an interesting and difficult project from Geotechnical Enginering point of view, especially from my side.

First of all, they are going to build an underground station under an 200 year old train station structure without any deformation. This is a really though job, since water table is vey high. Due to the limited space of construction, top-down construction style is chosen.  

Additionally, you have to construct a tunnel which must pass under a Limmat river. So, you have to be very carefull for providing water-tightness. As a summary it was very valuable experince for me to inspect such a project that close. I strongly recommend my colleques to inspect and check this huge project if they have a chance.

By this way I strongly thank to the responsible site manager for his guidence through the site visit and valuable information that he gave us. for more info:

http://www.sbb.ch/en/corporation/the-company/projects/upgrading-the-rail-network/dml.html

Finaly, we made our SCC samples at SIKA with Oliver. Through his valuable advices we found a chance to prepare different SCC reciepes and observed the reactions by changing the concrete ingridents.

We also tried our samples by SIKA ViscoCrete, and prepapre our samples. It was very  educational.   :))

In the second day of the SIKA Experince we visited a liquid chemical factory of SIKA which is near to Bern.We checked how liquid concrete additives are prepared from beginning till end. Then we visited a mechanical shop of SIKA cooperative with ALIVA where they build shotcrete pumps at a place close to Zurich. The common property of the palces here is being so tidy and clean, even the mechanical shop. :) Then we move to SIKA headquarters and prepare a SCC reciepe with the help of Oliver. Tomorrow we will test our reciepe with my team Enrique and Alex. 

Finally we have lovely dinner with Oliver in a traditional restaurant. I tried to eat everything as much as possible. :))

The Sika Concrete experience started today at the BU concrete’s office where we received warm welcome from the affable staffs of Sika. We were given a quick overview on the company history and its operations through presentation slides from Juerg. The company makes a lot of progress since its inception 100 years ago, no doubt about it. We then moved to technical discussions especially on the self-compacting concrete (SCC) and it followed by a tour to the laboratory where we got to see a fraction of superplasticizer power produced excellent flowability and virtually no vibration or whatsoever required after the placement of SCC.  Amazing invention to facilitate the casting of concrete in difficult conditions (Like the thin concrete wall of prison toilet :p ).

The rest of the day was spent on the introduction of concrete mix design software that we will be using tomorrow before we get our hands on the concrete ingredients. The day was concluded with Zurich city tour and dinner with Juerg and Oliver. Thanks guys :)

Alex

Hello Everybody,

Greetings from Zurich, Switzerland where SIKA headquarters is located. It has been a lovely experience up to now. And the remaing is also seem so… :) It is a very valuable experience to be here, if SIKA is supplying some of the products in your professional business. And also thanks for SIKA to give me such an opportunity.

I am a geotechnical engineer in the civil engineering field. I always face with problems while designing small diameter piles. Actually micropiles. Due to small diameter of the excavated hole and the reinforcement in that hole, constructors always face with installation problem of concrete. Sika solves this problem by introducing some sort of high-engineered additives into  your concrete. After that additives the concrete named Self Placing Concrete or Self Compacting Concrete (SCC). By this way, concrete fills up every space that it finds up.  For this additives I am saying “high-engineered”, because succsessful team of scientists work in Sika Headquarters to invent that kind of materials.

It is very interesting for me to see SCC demonstration in the lab. We also see that they have some innovative products in the automotive sector. For example, if you are driving a typical German Car, the front glass of that car stays in place with Sika adhesives… :))

And last final best thing from this experince is having a chance to know people from different cultures from different part of the world. I am from Turkey, my internship friends are from Mexico and Malaysia and our lovely technical and administrative people are mostly Swiss and German. Thanks for the friendly and warm environment up to now. :))

Monday went really fast for me; I barely woke up this morning to meet the guys for breakfast since I’m still suffering from a bit of “Jet lag”, but somehow I managed to get up. Later on we met Juerg at the reception and after a quick introduction we were on our way to Sika’s Concrete BU where we met some of the people who made our experience possible and to which we are very grateful. We had a brief presentation on Sika’s history and a guided tour of the facilities here in Zurich which I thought were very interesting and impressive. We also took a first glance on what we will be working on the next few days; “Concrete Mix Design for Self Compacting Concrete”. Afterwards we headed downtown for a quick walk and had dinner with Juerg and Oliver. I had a great experience today, not only did I learn impressive things about concrete products but also I learned a lot about Swiss culture.

Enrique