Fujita Corporation
Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd.

Fujita Corporation (Headquarter: Shibuya-ku Tokyo, President: Takuji Ueda, referred to as "Fujita" hereafter) and Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd. (Headquarter: Osaka City, President: Naotake Ohno, referred to as "Daiwa House" hereafter) jointly developed "STARS Footing Beam Method" *3; it reinforces the open hole of the footing beam with a star-shaped reinforcement bar. It creates large open holes *2 as large as half of the beam depth *1 on the footing beam of reinforced concrete construction. It can be utilized on various buildings such as condominium apartments and rental housings.

This technique obtained the performance verification certificate from the General Building Research Corporation of Japan in December 2014 *4 (GBRC performance verification no. 14-22)."STARS Footing Beam Method" marks the fourth Synergy Development of Fujita and Daiwa House.

It is common to have an open hole on the footing beam (about 600 mm diameter) for the basement space inspection purpose, but this could weaken the footing beam and therefore reinforcement becomes necessary. Our jointly developed "STARS Footing Beam Method" is a reinforcement method for such open holes. It provides much more efficient reinforcement than the traditional method with a star-shaped reinforcement bar *5 which is a combination of isosceles triangle reinforcement bars, aperture reinforcement bars, opening top and bottom reinforcement bars, and opening horizontal reinforcement bars.

Normally, when opening the hole on footing beam, the beam depth is recommended to be three times in length of the hole diameter*6. Especially for mid to low rise building, more than 1,800 mm beam depth is recommended for 600 mm diameter open hole even when it is not structurally necessary. By implementing our technique, the beam depth can remain as small as 1,200mm.

This technique also enables labor saving which results in lowering the principal basement and earthwork frame construction budget 5 to 10 % compared to conventional methods. We are planning to start applying our jointly developed "STARS Footing Beam Method" to buildings such as condominium apartments, rental housings, and senior homes with hospital and service facilities.

*1 The height from the top to the bottom of the beam
*2 The existing hole on the beam, which is utilized as the basement pathway at the time of inspection or to implement plumbing
*3 In the process of trademark registration
*4 The performance verification is issued for newly developed construction technique with third perspective performance reviews
*5 It is named Star Shaped Reinforcement Bar because of its shape
*6 From "AIJ Standards for Structural Calculation of Steel Reinforced Concrete Structures" published by Architectural Institute of Japan

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Fujita Corporation
Public Relations Office
Tel. +81-3-3402-1911
Fax. +81-3-3404-8477
Email. info@fujita.co.jp