With a total height of 829.8 m and a roof height of 828 m, the Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the World, and it has held this record since its topping out in 2009.

The building was originally named Burj Dubai but was renamed in honor of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

This iconic skyscraper immediately became the symbol of the government of Dubai’s plan to transform the city into a touristic hub and to gain international recognition.

The tower’s structural system consists of reinforced concrete construction from foundation to Level 156; above Level 156 is predominantly a spire, consisting of a structural steel braced frame system. It used 330,000 m3 of concrete and 55,000 tons of steel rebar.

The foundation system is a piled raft: a 3.7 m thick raft supported by 1.5 m diameter bored piles with a diameter of 1.5 m each, extending 50 m below the raft base.

Numerous pile load tests were carried out on the piles of the tower. Crosshole Sonic logging (CSL) testing was also carried out for integrity testing of concrete foundation on a number of works piles, using 20km of Dextra Sonitec tubes.

Sonitec is a simple, fast, and reliable tube solution used for the CSL testing. The system is compliant with ASTM D6760, the standard method for integrity testing by ultrasonic cross-hole testing.

Moreover, more than 100,000 Bartec couplers were supplied for piled-raft extension and reinforcement.

Dream Acres is a large residential complex (81 acres area) located east of Bangalore in India. The ambitious real estate program features 13 towers of 14 floors built in a record time thanks to the use of precast construction methods supported by a purpose-built factory powered by Vollert equipment.

For this project, Dextra offered owner and contractorSobha with a two distinct coupler solutions, supported by threading services.

On Dream Acres, Groutec precast solution was used for the swift connection of precast elements either to a footing or directly to another precast element, ensuring a high performance connection and speeding up installation compared to more traditional wet in-situ joint methods.

After casting on the production line, the panel is brought to its final location for straightening and bracing installation. Locally sourced non-shrink grout is inserted into the cavity by injection. After injection, the bracing around the precast panel may then be removed after only 3 days.

Dextra does not supply the grout as Groutec is by design compatible with several non-shrink grout brands that can be sourced locally, generating savings and easing logistics.

To complement our precast solution, Dextra also supplied its Bartec solution. Bartec is used across Dream Acres to splice the reinforcement for cast-in-place applications as well as for precast applications to achieve longer length in precast elements.

To support both solutions, Dextra India took in charge the rebar preparation operations. Rebar with Bartec-threaded ends were delivered directly to Sobha according to their production schedule. Same bars can be used indifferently with Bartec couplers or Groutec couplers as the two solutions take advantage of the same thread system.

Next to the “Geomatikum” building, which houses numerous departments and research centres of the university of Hamburg, the new “House of the Earth” is taking shape. Across more than 21,000 square meters of space, this multipurpose structure will accommodate activities related to geoscience and especially climate research: As of 2018, all units related to the CliSAP (“Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction”) excellency cluster will research and teach from here, in close proximity to the Max-Planck-institute for Meteorology.

During 2016 and 2017, Dextra supplied its Griptec system for the splicing of cast in place reinforcement in various parts of the building. Griptec couplers are available all over Germany through our network of distributors. Of course, Griptec has been approved for the German construction market by the DIBt (Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik).

For more information about Griptec’s availability in Germany, please contact Dextra Europe office.

SOCAR Tower is corporate office tower located on the way to the city center of Baku, capital city of Azerbaijan. This is the tallest building in Azerbaijan, and in the entire Caucasus region.

The building acts as the headquarters of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR)

The tower features 42 floors and reaches a height of 202 meters. It has been completed in 2016. It is now one of the most recognizable landmark of Baku.

For this project, Dextra has been involved on the project for concrete works between 2011 and 2014, supplying the Bartec rebar coupler solution for all rebar connections on the project. The project was supported by Bartec equipment sets, installed directly at site, and supported by Dextra European aftersales team for site support.

Dextra rebar couplers were supplied to contractor Tekfen for:

• vertical bar-to-bar connections in columns.
• horizontal rebar connections in slabs.
• wall to beam connections. In that case the coupler is cast flush with formwork in first phase concreting. After formwork removal, connecting rebar is simply screwed into the
  Bartec coupler.

To allow for the splicing of bars at places where the rebar haven’t been prepared with a thread, RepairGrip sleeves and hydraulic equipment were also supplied for precise applications. RepairGrip allow to conveniently splice rebar where the protruding length wouldn’t be sufficient to perform a safe overlap.
For more information about the availability of precast solutions in Middle East, please contact our Dubai office for more information.

The i-Towers are a 3-building mix-used estate project located at the heart of the new Central Business District of Gaborone, capital city of Botswana.

The project is designed and built by Murray and Roberts Botswana and features a 21-storeys residential tower, as well as a smaller 14-storeys office building tower, a commercial building and parking spaces.

For this new Gaborone landmark, Dextra supplied its Bartec® rebar coupler solutions, which the main rebar splicing solution used in Botswana and South Africa.

Bartec is often a prefered solution for highrise projects as it is chosen for the reliability of its rebar preparation process, its performance level and the gains of productivity it offers during the reinforcement installation.

In total, those are more than 20,000 Bartec rebar couplers which have been used for columns and slabs on the two i-Towers.

For more information about couplers product and equipment availability in Botswana and South Africa, please contact our Paris office.

The Car Servicing Building located at 2 Kung Chong Road in Singapore is a mixed-use 7-storey car park basement, car servicing facility and office building. The building will be occupied by the Automobile Association of Singapore.

This project, built by Zhengda Corporporation Pte Ltd, is taking advantage of precast technology to achieve faster construction cycles. The production of the precast elements was performed by the Malaysian precaster Eastern Pretech.

For this project, Dextra delivered to Malaysia about 6,000 Groutec couplers, which have been embedded into shear walls and column elements.

The elements were then brought to site and reconnected to protruding reinforcement by injecting non-shrink grouting mortar. Bracing around the precast element is usually removed in the 3 days following the grout injection, significantly reducing the assembly time.

For more information about the availability of precast solutions in Singapore, please contact Dextra team in Malaysia.

Nathani Heights is a 72-storeys skycrapper in Mumbai. With a total height of 262 meters it is among the 30 tallest building in the city. The construction of the building started in 2012 and will be completed in 2018.

For this project, Dextra supplied its famous Bartec rebar coupler solution. Bartec is the main rebar coupler solutions in India, satisfying all technical requirements even in seismic areas.

As in other highrise building, rebar couplers have been used for large diameter rebar connection in vertical applications such as columns and corewalls (bar to bar vertical connection).

Rebar couplers were also used for slab connections. In that case, the coupler is pre-positionner flush with formwork (allowing climbing formwork to go up). After casting, a threaded rebar is simply screwed inside the coupler to create the starter bar.