Top 5 interview question | Practical Interview Question 2024

What are the functions of different components of a typical expansion joint ?

In a typical expansion joint, it normally contains the following components: joint sealant, joint filler, dowel bar, PVC dowel sleeve, bond breaker tape and cradle bent. Joint sealant: it seals the joint width and prevents water and dirt from entering the joint and causing dowel bar corrosion and unexpected joint stress resulting from restrained movement.

Joint filler: it is compressible so that the joint can expand freely without constraint. Someone may doubt that even without its presence, the joint can still expand freely. In fact, its presence is necessary because it serves the purpose of space occupation such that even if dirt and rubbish are intruded in the joint, there is no space left for their accommodation.

Dowel bar: This is a major component of the joint. It serves to guide the direction of movement of concrete expansion. Therefore, incorrect direction of placement of dowel bar will induce stresses in the joint during thermal expansion. On the other hand, it links the two adjacent structures by transferring loads across the joints.

PVC dowel sleeve: It serves to facilitate the movement of dowel bar. On one side of the joint, the dowel bar is encased in concrete. On the other side, however, the PVC dowel sleeve is bonded directly to concrete so that movement of dowel bar can take place. One may notice that the detailing of normal expansion joints in Highways Standard Drawing is in such a way that part of PVC dowel sleeve is also extended to the other part of the joint where the dowel bar is directly adhered to concrete. In this case, it appears that this arrangement prevents the movement of joint. If this is the case, why should designers purposely put up such arrangement? In fact, the rationale behind this is to avoid water from getting into contact with dowel bar in case the joint sealant fails. As PVC is a flexible material, it only minutely hinders the movement of joint only under this design.

Bond breaker tape: As the majority of joint sealant is applied in liquid form during construction, the bond breaker tape helps to prevent flowing of sealant liquid inside the joint .

Cradle bar: It helps to uphold the dowel bar in position during construction

If on-site slump test fails, should engineers allow the contractor to continue the concreting works?

This is a very classical question raised by many graduate engineers. In fact, there are two schools of thought regarding this issue.
The first school of thought is rather straightforward: the contractor fails to comply with contractual requirements and therefore as per G. C. C. Clause 54 (2)(c) the engineer could order suspension of the Works. Under the conditions of G. C. C. Clause 54(2)(a) – (d), the contractor is not entitled to any claims of cost which is the main concern for most engineers.

This is the contractual power given to the Engineer in case of any failure in tests required by the contract, even though some engineers argue that slump tests are not as important as other tests like compression test. The second school of thought is to let the contractor to continue their concreting works and later on request the contractor to prove that the finished works comply with other contractual requirements e.g. compression test.

This is based upon the belief that workability is mainly required to achieve design concrete compression strength. In case the compression test also fails, the contractor should demolish and reconstruct the works accordingly. In fact, this is a rather passive way of treating construction works and is not recommended because of the following reasons:

(i) Workability of freshly placed concrete is related not only to strength but also to durability of concrete. Even if the future compression test passes, failing in slump test indicates that it may have adverse impact to durability of completed concrete structures.

(ii) In case the compression test fails, the contractor has to deploy extra time and resources to remove the work and reconstruct them once again and this slows down the progress of works significantly. Hence, in view of such likely probability of occurrence, why shouldn’t the Engineer exercise his power to stop the contractor and save these extra time and cos

What is the function of shear keys in the design of retaining walls?

In determining the external stability of retaining walls, failure modes like bearing failure, sliding and overturning are normally considered in design. In considering the criterion of sliding, the sliding resistance of retaining walls is derived from the base friction between the wall base and the foundation soils. To increase the sliding resistance of retaining walls, other than providing a large self-weight or a large retained soil mass, shear keys are to be installed at the wall base. The principle of shear keys is as follows:

The main purpose of installation of shear keys is to increase the extra passive resistance developed by the height of shear keys. However, active pressure developed by shear keys also increases simultaneously. The success of shear keys lies in the fact that the increase of passive pressure exceeds the increase in active pressure, resulting in a net improvement of sliding resistance.

On the other hand, friction between the wall base and the foundation soils is normally about a fraction of the angle of internal resistance (i.e. about 0.8φ ) where φ is the angle of internal friction of foundation soil. When a shear key is installed at the base of the retaining wall, the failure surface is changed from the wall base/soil horizontal plane to a plane within foundation soil. Therefore, the friction angle mobilized in this case is φ instead of 0.8φ in the previous case and the sliding resistance can be enhanced.

In designing concrete structures, normally maximum aggregate sizes are adopted with ranges from 10mm to 20mm. Does an increase of maximum aggregate size benefit the structures ?

To answer this question, let’s consider an example of a cube. The surface area to volume ratio of a cube is 6/b where b is the length of the cube. This implies that the surface area to volume ratio decreases with an increase in volume.

Therefore, when the size of maximum aggregate is increased, the surface area to be wetted by water per unit volume is reduced. Consequently, the water requirement of the concrete mixes is reduced accordingly so that the water/cement ratio can be lowered, resulting in a rise in concrete strength.

However, an increase of aggregate size is also accompanied by the effect of reduced contact areas and discontinuities created by these larger sized particles. In general, for maximum aggregate sizes below 40mm, the effect of lower water requirement can offset the disadvantages brought about by discontinuities as suggested by Longman Scientific and Technical (1987

In concrete compression test, normally 150mmx150mmx150mm concrete cube samples is used for testing. Why isn’t 100mmx100mmx100mm concrete cube samples used in the test instead of 150mmx150mmx150mm concrete cube samples?

Basically, the force supplied by a concrete compression machine is a definite value. For normal concrete strength application, say below 50MPa, the stress produced by a 150mmx150mmx150mm cube is sufficient for the machine to crush the concrete sample.

However, if the designed concrete strength is 100MPa, under the same force (about 2,000kN) supplied by the machine, the stress under a 150mmx150mmx150mm cube is not sufficient to crush the concrete cube.

Therefore, 100mmx100mmx100mm concrete cubes are used instead to increase the applied stress to crush the concrete cubes. For normal concrete strength, the cube size of 150mmx150mmx150mm is already sufficient for the crushing strength of the machine.