Malls
Infinity Mall
Basement plus four floors on a 5,449 m² plot, 11,600 m² built. 92 retail units and 36 offices. Excavation and foundations under way.
Structural design · Retrofitting · Patented systems
Strength added without adding a millimetre.
ACT designs structures and repairs them. Forty years of site work and laboratory research have produced five patented systems — a strengthening technique that doubles the capacity of a column without changing its size, and a family of rebar connections that replace every bend, weld and lap splice.
Bridges · design & assessment
MST · US 6,718,723 · EG 21647 / 23111
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Years of
practice
practice
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Projects
delivered
delivered
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Patents
granted & filed
granted & filed
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Bridges inspected
and redesigned
and redesigned
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Countries with
delivered work
delivered work
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Project reviews
completed
completed
What ACT does
Three ways in.
One engineering standard.
Most clients arrive with one of three problems: a building that has to carry more than it was built for, a structure that has to be designed from scratch, or a system they want to license and manufacture. The laboratory work behind all three is the same.
01 — Retrofitting
Make it carry more
Active external confinement applied through angles, plates and strips. Capacity and ductility doubled, in service, with no setting time and almost no added section.
The MST technique
02 — Design & review
Design it properly
Full structural design and site supervision for malls, towers, factories, hospitals and bridges — and independent review when somebody else did the design.
Project record
03 — Systems
License the technology
Five patented systems, from the mechanical rebar coupler to Karma walls and slabs, available for joint development, manufacture and site trials.
ACT SystemsTest evidence — four full-scale specimens
The joint stopped
being the weak point.
A frame knee joint fails where the main bars are bent around the corner. Four full-scale specimens were loaded to failure under closing moment: three with conventional detailing, one reinforced with the ACT rebar truss and its diagonal tension and compression members.
The truss specimen did not fail at the joint at all. Cracking there was effectively eliminated and the failure moved out into the mid-span of the column — the specimen was still carrying load at 180 mm of displacement when the test was stopped.
+81%Ultimate load, against the conventional specimen of the same detailing
+382%Displacement ductility index, µΔ = 5.25 against 1.09–2.02
2.8PTensile force on the bent main bar, reduced from 6.38P by the diagonal ties
Curves redrawn from the published test data. Press Run again to replay the loading.
ACT Systems
Five systems,
ten patents.
Each one started as a site problem and ended as a tested, granted patent. All five are available for licensing, joint development and supervised first application.
S1
Mechanical Strengthening Technique — MST
Active external confining pressure through angles and plates, locked in by welded strips. Axial capacity of a column more than doubled — measured at +212% when strengthened while still under working load. Detail
S2
Karma structural system
Light, cheap, insulating walls and slabs from precast ribbed panels with a foam core, assembled on site. Small foundations, good on weak soil, quick to finish. Detail
S3
Self-supporting hybrid truss beams
A rebar truss with simple mechanical joints that carries its own weight and the weight of the wet concrete. No formwork, no propping. Detail
S4
Beam–column joints: L-shaped coupler and truss reinforcement
Two ways to get rid of the bent bar in a corner joint. Both move the failure out of the joint and multiply ductility. Detail
S5
Mechanical rebar coupler
Double action of screw elements against the bar ribs. In tension tests the bar broke outside the coupler, not at it. Three closure techniques. Detail
Recent work
Built, not rendered.
Malls, towers, factories, hospitals and bridges across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Sudan and Djibouti.
Malls
The Gate Mall
Basement plus four floors, 4,460 m² built. Retail, medical and administrative units. Frame complete, finishing under way.
Bridges
Bridge assessment programme
Detailed inspection and assessment of about 300 bridges, each with a report setting out strengthening, repair or replacement.
Send the drawings.
We will tell you what it can carry.
Assessment, strengthening design, new structural design, independent review, or a licensing conversation about any of the five systems.