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Precast panels are pieces of concrete fabricated in a factory or sometimes at site to architectural requirements and stringent engineering requirements, and to local building and engineering code to withstand structural loads, wind loads, earthquakes, and fire.
There basically 2 types of wall panels.
- Sandwhich panels (with 3 layers- 1 structural, 2 insulation 3 outside architectural skin)
- Solid Panel – which may or may not take load.
Generally for multistory buldings, the wall panels also hold the building together structurally by bonding with the slabs. Enough renforcements or steel ferrules are placed in the panel to form structural bond with the slab when casting the panel in factory.
The molded concrete panels attain full strength after a couple of weeks. But usually attains enough strength for transportation and erection within a few days.
Further constraints are imposed due to restriction of transportability, crane capacity at site and factory, concrete strength at the time of lifting off the table.
The strength of the panel is attained by careful structural design using enough steel reinforcement, a correct mix of concrete, and curing methods.
Precast panel detaling services are generally provided by expert external drafting offices who have considerable experience with precast panels and specialized tools to develop the shop drawings for precast panels using the architectural design and structural engineering drawings.
The factory uses the precast panel shop drawings to form the panel mould, place various elements like, lifters, prop ferrules, couplers, grout tubes, cast in plates etc in the mould.
Curing time for a panel before it can be lifted off the mould is around 6 hours.
There are many specialized tools available to detail precast panels. the main ones are Tekla Structures, and Autocad.
Tek1 is using both Tekla Structures and Autocad in developing precast panel shop drawings.
There is no major advantage in using Tekla structures over customized autocad in terms of speed or accuracy for detailing 80% of todays panels in USA, UK or Austrlia. when using customized autocad.
When panel cross sections start varying, or when the reinforcements starts getting extremely complicated, there could be some advantage in using a 3D cad system like solidworks, Revit or Tekla. But today, Autocad’s 3 d capability has improved and with some api developement, can beat or approach the productivity of other CAD systems when detailing precast panels.