1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hollow formwork for use in making a concrete elongated member used to form a concrete roadbed of, for example, a high level roadway or a road bridge. Specifically, the concrete beam herein referred to may be such as used as a prestressed concrete bridge beam of a kind stipulated in JIS-A-5373 as a precast prestressed concrete product.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A concrete roadbed 100, shown in
As a material for the inner hollow formwork 113, a lightweight synthetic resinous foam material has hitherto been used. See, for example, the Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 7-331614. It is, however, been found that where the roadbed 100 is formed with the concrete beams 112 each having embedded therein an inner hollow formwork 113 made of foamed styrene, a substantial amount of obnoxious or harmful industrial wastes would result in when the concrete roadbed is wrecked or dismounted in the future.
In view of the above, as a material for the hollow inner formwork 113, environmentally friendly wooden boards are employed. Also, for further reduction in weight, the use of hollow inner formworks has come to be contemplated, which is made of corrugated cardboard formed by bonding liners to opposite surfaces of a corrugated fiberboard. See, for example, the Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 60-2897.
Where the hollow inner formworks made of the corrugated cardboard are used in forming the concrete beams 112, each hollow inner formwork 113A is, as shown in
In view of the foregoing, the present invention is intended to provide an environmentally friendly, inexpensive hollow inner formwork made of corrugated cardboard, which is lightweight and has a sufficient strength and which can be used in an elongated concrete member such as, for example, a concrete beam used to form a concrete roadbed of, for example, a high level roadway or a road bridge.
In order to accomplish the foregoing object, the hollow formwork for an elongated concrete member herein provided in accordance with the present invention is of a kind adapted to be embedded in the elongated concrete member during casting of a concrete material to define a hollow in the elongated concrete member. This hollow formwork of the present invention includes a tubular member having a polygonal section formed by bending an oblong plate of corrugated cardboard made of paper. The corrugated cardboard plate includes a plurality of corrugated cardboards laminated together and each formed by bonding liner sheets to surfaces of a corrugated sheet. The corrugated cardboards have flutes oriented in a direction across a thickness of the corrugated cardboard plate, and a sheet bonded to front and rear major surfaces thereof.
It is generally well known that the corrugated cardboard 3 made up of a corrugated sheet 1 and liner sheets 2 bonded to opposite surfaces of the corrugated sheet 1, respectively, is prominently susceptible to deformation when a compressive force is applied thereto in a direction C perpendicular to a major surface of the liner sheet 2, and susceptible to deformation when a compressive force is applied thereto in a direction B parallel to the major plane of the liner sheet 2 and perpendicular to ridges 1a of the corrugated sheet 1, but can resist to the compressive force applied in a direction B parallel to the ridges 1 or flutes in the corrugated cardboard.
Accordingly, since the formwork according to the present invention includes the tubular member prepared from the corrugated cardboard plate formed by bonding a plurality of corrugated cardboards together and since the flutes of the corrugated cardboards are oriented in a direction across the thickness of the corrugated cardboard plate, the direction of the flutes of the corrugated cardboard having a high strength confront the direction in which the compressive force acts from the surrounding concrete, to thereby avoid an undesirable deformation of the tubular member. Hence, the formwork having a high strength can be obtained. The use of this formwork can contribute to avoid reduction in strength of the elongated concrete member as a whole. Also, since the corrugated cardboard plate is made of paper, the formwork which is lightweight, environmentally friendly and inexpensive can be obtained.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, portions of the corrugated cardboard plate, which are bent to form the tubular member, may be formed with respective cutouts each having a generally V-shaped section before the corrugated cardboard plate is bent to provide the tubular member. Specifically, the corrugated cardboard plate used as a material for the tubular member of the formwork according to the present invention has such high a strength in a direction across the thickness thereof that it cannot be easily bent. Accordingly, formation of the cutouts of the generally V-shaped section at the respective portions of the corrugated cardboard plate effectively facilitate bending of the corrugated cardboard plate and, accordingly, the formwork having a desired sectional shape can easily be obtained.
In another preferred embodiment of the present invention, a plurality of partition walls made of a corrugated cardboard may be utilized and positioned inside the tubular member for dividing a hollow of the tubular member into cells. In this case, each of the partition walls is made up of a plurality of corrugated cardboards bonded together with flutes thereof oriented in a direction parallel to a major surface of the respective partition wall, each of which corrugated cardboards is formed by bonding liner sheets to surfaces of a corrugated sheet, Also, at least one of the corrugated cardboards forming the respective partition wall has the flutes oriented in a direction perpendicular to those of the other of the corrugated cardboards.
The use of the partition walls is effective to reinforce the tubular member against the compressive force applied from the surrounding concrete material during the casting of the concrete material. At this time, since the compressive force acts on the partition walls in a direction shown by A or B in
In a still further preferred embodiment of the present invention, the formwork may include a plurality of tubular members connected end-to-end with each other through a connecting wall member. In this case, the connecting wall member includes a base board made of paper liners and having its opposite surface to which respective undersized engagement blocks each prepared from a corrugated cardboard plate are bonded. The undersized engagement blocks are, when the tubular members are connected with each other, received within respective open ends of those tubular members. According to this feature, since the tubular members are connected together with the undersized engagement blocks received within the respective open ends of the neighboring tubular members, no connection between the tubular members will become bulky and a relatively high connecting strength can be obtained.
In a still further preferred embodiment of the present invention, an end wall member made of paper for closing each of opposite open ends of the tubular member or a row of tubular members may be employed. This end wall member includes a body made of the corrugated cardboard plate, with the flutes of the corrugated cardboards forming the corrugated cardboard plate being oriented in a direction across a thickness of the corrugated cardboard plate. According to this feature, since the flutes of the corrugated cardboards used to form the end wall member are oriented in a direction across the thickness of the end wall member, the end wall can exhibit a high strength against the compressive force acting from the surrounding concrete to the end wall member in a direction across the thickness of such end wall member.
In a still further preferred embodiment of the present invention, the tubular member and the end wall member may have their respective outer surfaces treated with a waterproofing treatment, so that no water component will soak in the formwork during the casting of the concrete material and, therefore, an undesirable reduction in strength of the formwork, made of paper, resulting from absorption of the water component can advantageously be avoided.
In any event, the present invention will become more clearly understood from the following description of preferred embodiments thereof, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. However, the embodiments and the drawings are given only for the purpose of illustration and explanation, and are not to be taken as limiting the scope of the present invention in any way whatsoever, which scope is to be determined by the appended claims. In the accompanying drawings, like reference numerals are used to denote like parts throughout the several views, and:
Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail in connection with a preferred embodiment thereof with reference to the accompanying drawings.
The tubular member 11 is formed by bending the corrugated cardboard plate 5 as shown in
The corrugated cardboard 5 of the structure shown in and described with reference to
The tubular member 11 formed by bending the corrugated cardboard plate 5 as hereinabove described has six angled corners 11a each defined by a substantially V-shaped cutout 5b formed in the corrugated cardboard plate 5 prior to the latter being bent to provide the tubular member 11 as best shown in
As shown in
The partition wall 12 has upper, shoulder, left, right, left lower and right lower sides 31A to 34A which contact the corresponding sides 31 to 34 of the tubular member 11 when the partition wall 12 is positioned inside and bonded to the tubular member 11 shown in
With the partition walls 12 positioned inside and bonded to the tubular member 11, the partition walls 12 are subjected to the compressive force F applied thereto through an outer peripheral surface of the tubular member 11 of
The neighboring partition walls 12 positioned inside the tubular member 11 shown in
Referring now to
As shown in
In the end wall 13 of the structure described above, since the corrugated cardboard plate 5 forming the body 13a of the end wall 13 can have a high compressive strength since the flutes in the corrugated cardboard plate 5 forming the body 13a are oriented in a direction P aligned with the direction in which the compressive force F acts on the end wall 13 during the casting of the concrete material. Also, at each of the opposite open ends of the tubular member 11, the corrugated cardboards 3A and 3B forming the undersized engagement block 13b of the end wall 13 resists against the compressive force acting on respective sides 31-34 of the tubular body 11 to thereby reinforce the tubular body 11 in a direction generally radially outwardly.
The connecting wall member 14 includes a generally heptagonal base board 7 made up of a t least one paper liner having its opposite surfaces to which respective undersized engagement blocks 8 each prepared from the corrugated cardboard plate 5 are bonded. As shown in
The formwork 10 so designed and so structured as hereinbefore described is placed inside an outer mold in a manner similar to that hitherto practiced as shown in
The elongated concrete member 40 may be often formed with one or more drain ports 20 in a bottom portion of the elongated concrete member 40 for drainage of water. This is because when the elongated concrete member 40 has been used in the field for a prolonged period of time, the corrugated cardboards forming the formwork 10 inside the elongated concrete member 40 may be decayed and water may soak in through cracks appearing in the concrete member 40, eventually pooling within the hollow 11b of the elongated concrete member 20. In this respect, if a connecting passage 21 for communicating between the neighboring cells separated from each other by the partition wall 12 from each other is formed in a lower portion of the partition wall 12 used in the formwork 10, water pooling inside the hollow 11b can be drained to the outside through the drain port 20 by way of a gap 30 between the abutted end edges 5a of the corrugated cardboard plate 5 forming the tubular member 11, thereby accomplishing drainage of the water from the elongated concrete member 40.
As hereinbefore fully described, the tubular member 11, the partition walls 12, the end walls 13 and the connecting wall member 14, all forming respective parts of the formwork 10, have an excellent strength and, also, since all of them are prepared from a paper material, the formwork that is lightweight, environmentally friendly and inexpensive can be obtained.
Although the present invention has been fully described in connection with the preferred embodiments thereof with reference to the accompanying drawings which are used only for the purpose of illustration, those skilled in the art will readily conceive numerous changes and modifications within the framework of obviousness upon the reading of the specification herein presented of the present invention. By way of example, although the partition walls 12, the end walls 13 and the connecting wall member 14 have been shown and described as prepared from corrugated cardboards, they may be made of a wood material. Also, where the elongated formwork 10 is used in the elongated concrete member which is not stipulated according to JIS-A-5373, the elongated formwork 10 may have any suitable polygonal section other than the heptagonal section.
Accordingly, such changes and modifications are, unless they depart from the scope of the present invention as delivered from the claims annexed hereto, to be construed as included therein.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2004-059105 | Mar 2004 | JP | national |
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20050229536 A1 | Oct 2005 | US |