Application Research Of PP Plastic Formwork In Building Construction

With the sustainable and rapid development of economy and the process of urbanization, China has become the largest building construction market in the world. Building formwork is an important part of the cast-in-situ reinforced concrete engineering related to the quality of the projects, safety, progress and economic benefits. As a result, the selection of building formworks and use for construction projects is very important. Over the past decade, through the advancement of plastic formworks in Europe and the United States, there are increasingly more and more various types of plastic formworks. In China, plastic formwork has experienced a continuous development for20years. Plastic formworks have been used in construction engineering and bridge engineering with good performance. However, the application research of plastic formwork is relatively less and there are no relevant norms and standards. It’s necessary to stress on the research of plastic formwork in order to provide the science basis for the generalization and application of the plastic formwork. The physical and mechanical properties, support design and advantages of PP plastic formwork were conducted by using laboratory testing, economic analysis and practical calculation. The laboratory testing results indicated that polypropylene (PP) plastic formwork whose density is near to0.9878g/cm3belongs to the lightweight construction material. The moisture content tests also indicated that PP plastic formwork could meet the requirements of building formwork. The average tensile strength of PP plastic formwork is13.59MPa while the flexural strength is more than32MPa. The elastic modulus of PP plastic formwork is kind of small with average363O.85MPa. Based on the measured physical and mechanical properties, a series of practical calculation of PP plastic formwork were performed according to the practical calculation standards of bamboo glue formwork, espescially the strength calculation and deflection calculation of formwork engineering of beam, column and wall. The support design of PP plastic formwork is performed according to the practical calculation results. The key points of installation, demolition and construction process of PP plastic formwork also were summarized to provide some reference for the practical application. The economic analysis showed that the average capitation fee of PP plastic formwork is much lower than wood formwork and bamboo glue formwork although the unit cost of PP plastic formwork is higher than wood formwork and bamboo glue formwork.