advisors

DR ERIC WILLMOT: NATIONAL ADVISOR

Dr. Eric Willmot is Questech P/L P/L foremost Australian advisor. Dr.Eric Willmot was Professor of Education and Head of the School of Education at James Cook University of North Queensland. He was then appointed Head of the ACT Schools Authority and later became the Director General of Education in South Australia. He is a prominent member of the Australian Aboriginal community and served as chairman of the management committee for Aboriginal Education programs at both the University of Queensland and at the University of Newcastle in NSW. He was a lecturer at the University of Canberra, a Director of research at the Australian National University, Principal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Deputy Secretary in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Eric Willmot has taken a renaissance approach to his career.  He is one of Australia’s leading educationists and was honoured by the Australian government for his contributions in that field. 

He was the presenter in a film on Australian Prehistory Trade Routes and is widely published in a number of disciplines, including anthropology and history.  He had made many radio broadcasts on a wide range of subjects. He has also pursued a career in the physical sciences and in particular engineering.  In 1981 he won Australia’s ‘Inventor of the Year’ and has twice won the coveted Medaille d’or at Geneva in mechanical engineering first in 1981 and again in 2005.  In 1986 he delivered the ABC Boyer Lectures.  This is a series of lectures broadcast nationally on subjects relating to Australia in an international context.  Each year a prominent Australian is invited to present the series. The title of Willmot’s Boyer Lectures was Australia the Last Experiment.  This lecture series was highly acclaimed by the critics and illustrated the extraordinary breadth of Willmot’s own research and interests. Today he lives in Melbourne, where he is a bestselling author and a consulting engineer. He has occupied positions on the boards of numerous statutory authorities and companies. In May 1987 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Melbourne University.  He was awarded a Doctorate of Letters from Newcastle University, New South Wales in 2005.

QUESTECH EVG PANEL BUILDING PRODUCTS AND CONSTRUCTION SYSTEMS

 The state of the art with panel building systems in Australia

Various kinds of panel based building systems are now well established in the Australian building industry. The most common and successful product used in industrial buildings consists of large steel reinforced concrete panels. These are structurally, sound modular and allow for fairly rapid construction using heavy lift mobile cranes while the modules are carried on large trucks. These buildings must be precisely designed and the modules themselves prefabricated.

These buildings a very strong, rigid, reliable, long lived and cost competitive with other building systems such as concrete blocks, bricks or all steel buildings.

The advantages of this form of panel construction are:

·         Structural strength.

·         Long life and durability.

·         Low maintenance.

·         Water and pest resistant.

·         Fire resistance. (high level)

·         High level of insulation.

·         Can be used for single or two storey units

The disadvantages of this approach is:

• Great weight of the panels.
• High cost and difficulty of transportation to building sites.
• Difficulty of erection and assembly and needs for heavy lift cranes even for product unloading.
• Joining difficulties during erection.
• Waterproofing and vapour-proofing joints.
• The need to use very heavy bracing during construction
• Dangerous, with many safety problems in construction
• High cost and difficulty for post-building modification.
• Costly and high space demands of prefabrication site
• High water demands for manufacturing operations.
• Unsuitable for many sites outside industrial centres in cities.

Such products have never been able to compete with timber and bricks for household construction because of cost and lack of versatility and transport difficulties. However, many lighter panel and modular product are on the market now. Most of theses are either of a plastic, fibre reinforced cement, timber or other forest material based materials. Most of these suffer from poor fire resistance, pest or water problems and those that don’t fail to meet Australian structural building standards (when used on their own).

The next problem relates to the Australian environment. Australia is a large continent and includes all of deep wet tropics, temperate and cold regions as well as deserts and a variety of rock and soil types.

The Questech EVG-3D building panel material differs sharply from all of the above and is quite novel. The EVG-3D panel construction system overcomes almost all the above problems and can be more cost competitive.

First of all, the product is not usually delivered to the user as a complete or prefabricated panel, although this can be done when a group of prescribed prefabricated buildings, dwellings or specialist buildings such as sheds, huts, army barracks, mine workers housing or other such demountable accommodation is required. This sort of demand, may be met by Questech or by other manufacturers using Questech panel materials under license agreement.

This means that this building system can be used for all of:

• Industrial buildings, particularly where transport costs are an issue.
• Residential houses, where architectural forms and versatility are important.
• Barracks and special accommodation.
• Special purpose buildings
• Buildings in difficult terrain or remote and island locations

This is possible because of the way the product is produced and offered to a customer and the actual nature of the product, which is different to most other building panels.

This product is produced as a tabular beam consisting of three components. As with any beam structure, it has two structural surfaces which form a couple of two opposed force vectors working against each other so that one acts as a compression and the other as the tension surface. Each of these is formed from concrete reinforced with thin galvanized steel strips or rods 3mm in diameter. These are located inside each concrete lath at the distance specified in the various state or national standards so as to form two structural plates.  These two are attached to and separated from each other by a tabular rectangular slab of foam polystyrene plastic which forms the web of the beam. This foam plastic component is specially manufactured in regard to its density and cell structure. The tension and compression sides of the beam or held in place upon the web by diagonal zig zag steel braces made from the reinforcing steel material which engage the plastic web. Together these three elements form the structure of the panel.

The ability of the panel to oppose mechanical deflection for a designed load on the panel (the beam) is determined mainly by the displacement (separation) of the two outer surfaces of the beam and to a much lesser extent by the compressibility and elasticity of the web material. This is controlled at manufacture by the density of the web material.

The shear modulus of the panel is determined by the nature of the concrete forming the compression and tension plates of the panel and the location and size of the mesh configuration of the steel reinforcement. These two configurations of the components are designed to provide the desired structural characteristics of the panel when used as floors roofs and walls of a building and will be made to conform to national standards for the locations of the buildings.

The need to cope with other structural stresses on the finished structure is determined by local conditions and events such as floods and cyclones.  The panel’s capacity to deal with such conditions is controllable.  Firstly, the allowable designed compressibility of upright panels when loaded by heavy floors and roofs is determined by the concrete formulation and the nature and location reinforcing rods and security of attachment to the plastic web. This can be done during manufacture to fabrication at the site.  Finally, there is to total bulk modulus of any structure built properly from this product. This stress is the dimensional deformations caused by such changes as can be caused by Earth quakes cyclones and other land movements and by shock waves caused by explosions or other destructive vibrations. Theses changes do not only affect the total structure, but affect all elements of the structure including corner and lateral joints.

All of theses concerns are taken into account by insuring that the components are manufactured so meet the local optimal specifications according to the national and local standards. These in turn will depend on locations within a country like Australia.

Most of provisions for these can be taken into account during manufacture by sound engineering specification and design and quality control. Others such as the ingress of water and heat at joints are dealt with by the construction methods as follows.

The only elements of the structural system which need to be taken to a site are the plastic web panels and the reinforcement mesh along with the dry mixed concrete spray on components. Because of Australian water restriction and dust problems in arid areas, the concrete spraying should be done with airless spraying systems.  Several of these are available.  These are all light easily transported elements and machines.  The actual panels are fabricated cut and fitted into place on the site and held with waterproof glues and light timber or plastic braces. All channels carrying water sewerage and electricity are cut and fitted into the foam plastic web. With the reinforcing web fitted and attached to the web and joints.  The concrete surfaces are then sprayed onto the slab so forming the panel structure and sealing all joints. This forms a very strong monocular structural unit which is still sufficiently flexible via the more resilient to relieve the destructive forces of vibrations which this material will resist in any case.

Note that multiple floors are built floor by floor to avoid the need for heavy high lift cranes.

Foundations will where possible, consists of reinforced concrete waffle slabs or better still waffle void slabs so that each building sits upon its own rain water tank located directly under the building and below the ground. Roofs may be made from the same panels as the walls but may be dimensionally different to suit the different load conditions.

Advantages of using Questech EVG building systems in Australia 

First of all this system is well developed and thoroughly tested against all Australian standards. It has gone through all necessary testing to insure that the product is durable and long lasting.  Its advantages against other products in the field are:

• Structurally superior to most commonly used building materials
• Lightweight makes for low transport costs to any Australian building site.

·         Lightweight pre-assembled components make for low numbers of construction crews.

·         Most people involved in construction need not be highly skilled.

·         Light panels make raised floor tropical construction possible without heavy cranes. No more difficult than floor           boards or particle board panels.

·         Resistant to all insect and other pests.

·         Very high insulation and vapour seal construction,

·         Low weight complete construction allows for the use of concrete and transport saving waffle foundation to            meet RS&F standards for either M or H soil conditions.

·         All components non flammable for bushfire areas.

The only material capable with greater structural strength, beyond that required for Australian buildings are reinforced concrete slab panels, but these do not provide as good waterproofing particularly at joints.

All of this leads to a conclusion that including cost and these other benefits the Questech EVG building system is ideally suitable to Australian conditions.

Eric Willmot