Westpac Place, Sydney, Australia

Shearfix Punching Shear Reinforcement

A Shearfix stud rail system has been installed in the concrete frame of Westpac Place, the head office for the Westpac Banking Corporation in Sydney’s central business district.

Used within a concrete slab to provide additional reinforcement around columns, Ancon Shearfix is the ideal solution to the design and construction problems associated with punching shear. The use of pre-fabricated double-headed steel studs supplied welded to rails can accelerate both design and construction when compared to site-assembled shear links.

The rails are located around a column head or base to a designed layout. Studs are manufactured in a variety of diameters and in virtually any length to suit the load and depth of the slab.

The quantity and dimensions of both studs and rails, the spacing and the layout are all determined by calculation. To simplify system design, Ancon provides free calculation software. Ancon’s software not only calculates the stud dimensions and spacing, it also generates a DXF file of the rail layout for each column, which is then easily inserted in to floor plans. The Ancon program has the unique feature of allowing designs to both orthogonal and radial rail layouts, which enables the user to select the most cost-effective rail layout i.e. least number of studs, for each column.

Ancon also supplied over 3,000 reinforcing bar couplers, over 2,000 reinforcement continuity boxes and approximately 50 double-dowel shear load connectors to this project.

Hyder Consulting provided the structural designs while Leighton Contractors undertook the construction.

The building comprises 74,600m² of commercial office space, 3,000m² of service and retail areas, 864 car parking spaces and a landscaped urban park, which at the time of construction made it the second largest commercial building by area in Sydney’s CBD.

Photos are courtesy of Hyder Consulting.

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