Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

■■■■■■i 428 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. By the conjoint employment of reinforced concrete beams, slabs, and columns, almost every kind of building construction and nu- merous types of engineering structures can be executed. Reinforced concrete piles are fre- quently of exceptional service in the founda- tions of buildings, bridges, culverts, reservoirs, swimming baths, and elsewhere ; while in har- bour and river engineering they are even more valuable as the bases of structures built up of columns, struts, beams, and slabs of the same material. But in addition to the primary forms of structural members to which attention has Fig. 25.—REINFORCED CONCRETE COLUMN. Fig. 26 .—CAST-IRON COLUMN CASED IN FIRE-RESIST- ING MATERIAL. Fig. 27 .—STEEL COLUMN CASED IN FIRE-RESISTING MATERIAL. These three figures show that for equal strength a rein- forced concrete column takes up no more room than one of cast-iron or steel adequately protected against fire. Fig. 28.—A REINFORCED HENNEBIQUE PILE J VERTICAL AND CROSS SECTIONS. Fig. 29 .—PATENT MOUCHEL HOLLOW REINFORCED CON- CRETE PILE. Fig. 30 .—MOUCHEL ANCHOR PILE SURROUNDED BY IRON CYLINDERS, CONCRETE FILLED IN BETWEEN THE TWO. been confined so far, reinforced concrete is specially applicable to the design of circular reservoirs, water mains, drain conduits, cylin- drical chambers for the storage of grain, arches, and, in a word, for almost every class of construction in which other materials have been used up to the present, and including even barges, boats, and pontoons, railway sleepers, telegraph poles, fortifications, and armouring for war vessels in place of steel plates.