Yves De Lathouwer

Where Are the Cracks in the Definition of "Cracked Concrete"? A Critical Review of the Normative Basis for the Cracked-Concrete Default in Post-Installed Anchor Design, and the Case for a Probabilistic Classification

EN 1992-4 permits a fastening to be designed for uncracked concrete only where the absence of cracking can be demonstrated over the whole anchorage depth; in the absence of that demonstration the concrete is taken as cracked. In practice the demonstration is rarely attempted, and...

The Shared-Volume Anchorage Method: A Volume-Based Treatment of Anchor Groups at Concrete Corners and in Three-Sided Channel Connections

Revision 2 (29 August 2026) — what changed. The degeneracy claimed in Revision 1 — that the construction reduces identically to a plain EN 1992-4 verification when the corner interaction vanishes — was verified numerically for the first time, on the one configuration where the co...

The Shared-Volume Anchorage Method: A Volume-Based Treatment of Anchor Groups at Concrete Corners and in Three-Sided Channel Connections

EN 1992-4:2018 verifies a fastening on one concrete face. It contains no provision for the case in which two anchor plates sit on perpendicular faces of the same corner, nor for a channel section that wraps a member on three sides. Both configurations are ordinary in façade and p...

Where Are the Cracks in the Definition of "Cracked Concrete"? A Critical Review of the Normative Basis for the Cracked-Concrete Default in Post-Installed Anchor Design, and the Case for a Probabilistic Classification

EN 1992-4 permits a fastening to be designed for uncracked concrete only where the absence of cracking can be demonstrated over the whole anchorage depth; in the absence of that demonstration the concrete is taken as cracked. In practice the demonstration is rarely attempted, and...