Recommendations
Expansion Joints
Expansion joints in car parking areas must meet a wide range of conditions not normally experienced within other structures such as hospitals, offices, airports and shopping centres. They must:
- Provide smooth transit for pedestrians and most particularly those with disabilities. They should meet all current disability legislation requirements through the entire movement cycle of the jointing system. Vexcolt’s car park jointing systems have been designed meet current European and USA Disability Legislation (ADA).
- Be able to support high frequency vehicular loading and meet the requirements of Eurocode 1 – EN-1991-1-1 ‘Actions on structures’ and most particularly Section 6.3.3 ‘Garages and Vehicle Traffic Areas’ of this Norm which pinpoints the vehicle type, gross vehicle load, individual wheel load and wheel contact area. In this section of the Norm loading from Type F light vehicles used in parking areas having ≤30kN (3.0 tonnes) gross vehicle weight and ≤8 seats not including the driver should be used as the basis for load calculations to ensure that the expansion joint system selected meets Eurocodes.This data must be used to calculate (normally by Finite Element Analysis FEA) whether (or not) a jointing system can resist repeated loads from the types of vehicles classified.
- Expansion joints should be fully waterproof particularly at upper levels where the pooling of water is likely. Lower decks in multi-storey car parks also need to be waterproofed to prevent the passage of driven rain and water carried in by vehicles to other levels.
- Expansion joints in parking structures must be resistant to oils and road salts.
