Precast concrete sandwich panels offer numerous benefits, including insulation, durability, and fire resistance. Because they can be made using a high percentage of recycled materials and erected quickly with minimal site disturbance, they can also be major contributors toward construction of cost-efficient, sustainable structures. The result of Fabcon’s latest efforts is VersaCore+Green™, a sandwich panel introduced in March, 2007. The new panels have over 50% recycled content by volume and deliver the highest insulation values in the company’s 37 year history.

Moment-curvature plots and moment-axial force interaction diagrams are essential tools for understanding the load-deformation behavior of structural elements. To make the use of these tools simpler, a user-friendly spreadsheet-based program was created that can generate moment-curvature plots and moment-axial force interaction diagrams for reinforced concrete sections. These plots can include the effects of confinement provided by transverse reinforcement on the stress-strain relationship of concrete. The spreadsheet contains a series of macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and can be downloaded for free with the electronic version of this article.

The 4th International Workshop-Structural Concrete in the Americas took place April 20-21, 2007, in Atlanta, GA. Held in conjunction with the ACI Spring 2007 Convention, more than 80 experts from 21 countries participated. Special efforts were made to identify, select, and invite young practicing engineers as speakers. The technical sessions and recommendations from the Workshop are summarized in this article.