COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL LAPPING SYSTEM AND MECHANICAL SPLICING SYSTEM FOR REINFORCEMENT JOINTING

Abstract

With the increasing demand on steel especially from China in preparing for its 2008 Olympic as well as for its own infrastructure development, the price of steel have been increasing since 2001. As concrete is the common construction materials, steel bars are needed to strengthen the structure. The traditional way of jointing the rebar is by lapping method, which have caused a great wastage of steel. Thus, the objectives of the study are to highlight the pros and cons of using both the traditional and mechanical method of rebar splicing. There were six hypotheses highlighted, which concerns about the steel wastage caused by traditional lapping method and benefits of mechanical splicing system. The hypotheses were then tested through survey conducted with 16 local construction players as well as a computation the cost saving and steel wastage derived from a local building project. The findings have showed that mechanical splicing system carries more benefits than traditional lapping method. However, after the data analysis, it is felt that both methods will reach its fullness useful state when they are used in appropriate situations. The limitation of the study is that, not many of the local construction industry players have used the mechanical splicing system before, thus, resulted in lesser respondents able to give comment on the system.