CANZAC wanted to sell their innovative Metalscreed Eliminator concrete floor jointing system but had to verify it could meet the 50-year design life requirements of the New Zealand Building Code. The problem was there are no design or testing standards for this type of product.

The system is placed at the construction joint in industrial floors and can be subjected to repetitive loading from vehicles, ranging from load-trucks to forklifts. To comply with the New Zealand requirements, the system must be shown to meet the standard consistently over a 50-year design life. Our answer to CANZAC was to develop a statistically based accelerated lifecycle testing programme that could verify performance and show compliance.

We designed and manufactured a purpose-built test rig to simulate the repetitive wheel loadings on an industrial concrete floor slab. A series of concrete specimen floor units were manufactured on compacted sub-base identical to that used in real life. This was critical, as it ensured the boundary conditions used in the test specimen matched those found in actual warehouses. The test rig was designed to accommodate different sized test wheels and a hydraulic loading system used to simulate different axle weights while ensuring a constant downward pressure independent of the vertical location of the wheel.  This ensured the loading applied directly matched the loading conditions of a real forklift or load-truck crossing the joint.

Each test specimen was subjected to repetitive wheel loading of up to 1.5 million cycles. Our team maintained the testing equipment throughout the programme, achieving over 98% efficiency with no recorded breakdowns or unscheduled maintenance periods. To ensure confidence in testing it is important that the results obtained are statistically robust. After some fancy statistical analysis, we showed that the system was consistently capable of achieving the 50-year design life requirements. Using these results, CANZAC launched the product and quickly gained market success.

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