Call for Knowledge Industry Grants. Year 2024

Modality A. Seed

REhabilitation with Tension-Activated Structural Timber: RE-FESTA

The proposal, carried out by Nacho Costales, Xavier Gimferrer and Oriol Muntané, consists of investigating prestressed timber reinforcements for ceramic floor slabs.

Currently, in Catalan territory, there are about 130,000 homes with ceramic floor slabs. This type of slabs were developed from 1940 until the 1960s (coinciding with the first waves of immigration). This typology of slabs, also called “autarkic slabs”, spread during the post-war period, characterized by abundant labor, minimal use of steel (1941 decree restricting iron in building), and the abundance of ceramic materials. Thus, we find an important building stock, with ages between 65 and 85 years, built with this typology of slabs. Given the poor quality of the steel used and the limitation due to the lack of material, these elements have begun to suffer significant damage, resulting in material and human losses.

The challenge of this new approach will be to intervene in inhabited buildings, acting on the slabs from the underside, with the difficulty of access and inconvenience that this represents. It is for this reason that the proposal aims to be fast, adaptable to the different models of ceramic slabs that exist, reproducible in the building stock, economical, sustainable, and capable of improving the functional qualities of the buildings in areas such as acoustic and thermal insulation.