One of our most important objectives is our commitment to total quality, which is why our management system complies with all approval requirements and is certified by AENOR, a leading entity in the certification of management systems, products and services, and responsible for the development and dissemination of UNE standards in Spain. Our management system rationalizes our organizational, administrative, purchasing, commercial, logistical, production and results procedures, establishing the corresponding indicators that are now subject to continuous monitoring.

It is worth highlighting its implementation in the production area, where the corresponding procedures for launching, controlling, monitoring and production results are contemplated, both in terms of productivity and quality inspection of processes and products, accompanied by the control of incidents and corresponding "non-conformity" processes and their workflows for their follow-up and solution.

Also integrated into our quality management system are the procedures corresponding to the areas of R+D+i and preventive maintenance, in short, all areas of our company are integrated into the total quality objective.

At Strong Forms we are very committed to the quality of our aluminum formwork and its manufacture for the optimal use of the same in all areas of construction, such as productivity, efficiency, low costs and industrialization, and aware of the objective focus of our systems in lean construction and just in time construction.

Types of tests and objectives. In the experimental campaign carried out by the University of Alicante, our system and its elements successfully passed the detailed tests carried out in order to determine its qualities. The flow of tests was carried out in the following order:

– Characterization of mechanical properties of the material.

– Chemical tests of aluminum durability.

– Mechanical characterization of isolated pieces of formwork and of the joint between elements.

– Load test of a slab formwork system subjected to gravity loads.

– Load test of a formwork for vertical walls against fresh concrete thrust. Direct tensile tests.

Excellent values of strength, modulus and yield strength and elongation at break are found. Flexural tests, floor slabs. Slab formwork pieces were tested, with dimensions of 1.20×1.20 m². The first tests were performed with bending at three points, with a span of 1.10 m, and applying the load centered on a width of 80 cm. The test was repeated by applying the load in a distributed manner by means of sandbags. The EHE (Spanish Instruction on Structural Concrete) states that on the bottom face of a formwork there shall be no differences in height greater than ±20 mm before removing the props. The in-service operation of the formwork would be, in any of the hypotheses considered, guaranteeing the tolerances of the regulations, with deflections of less than 10 mm.

Chemical durability tests. As a conclusion of these tests, it is recommended to pre-treat the aluminum formworks with an aqueous solution of calcium hydroxide (lime) at 20% by mass, which is capable of generating a whitish surface layer that reduces the intensity of the hydrolysis solution in a basic medium. In other words, aluminum surfaces treated with this calcium hydroxide solution are less reactive and release less hydrogen gas.

It has been demonstrated that the use of aluminum formwork does not modify the main physical-mechanical properties of cement mortar (density, porosity, water absorption and mechanical compressive and flexural strengths), compared to standard steel formwork. Slab load test. Static load test on a horizontal formwork of dimensions 4.1 x 5 m.

Maintaining the 20 mm tolerance indicated in EHE-08, a slab of at least 50 cm of concrete can be built. Load test on vertical wall. A vertical formwork 1.80 m wide, 15 cm thick and up to 3 m high was built. At the most unfavorable point of the instrumented ones, the horizontal displacement was limited to 4 mm.

Considering the elastic modulus estimated above, the stresses during the entire test did not reach 100 MPa. Therefore, the material remained in the elastic regime with an adequate factor of safety.