Glossary: Industrial floor
Industrial Floors with DUCON Concrete

Highly resilient floor coverings for industrial requirements.

Industrial floors in modern production facilities are subjected to a variety of often extreme stresses. Heavy machinery, vibrations due to vibrations, vehicles with high point loads, chemical liquids, heat, cold, and strict criteria for impermeability: all these examples make it more than clear how high the profile of requirements for industrial floors is nowadays. The question that arises is: Which flooring is best suited for which purpose?

What is an industrial floor?

An industrial floor is a floor that is intended to withstand the highest loads as a floor covering in factory halls, as well as in warehouses, assembly halls, and production halls. Due to the different requirements for durability and safety, a normal floor cannot be installed here. Industrial floors are therefore very robust floor coverings that offer high resistance and function almost wear-free for a long period. Industrial floors are absolutely seamless, impact-resistant, scratch-resistant, and shock-resistant. These properties make industrial floors the ideal solution for all spaces and applications where particularly extreme demands are placed on the subfloor.

Where are industrial floors needed?

There are numerous applications and places for industrial floors. They are needed in almost all industries. They are used in the food sector as well as in heavy industry, manufacturing, and, of course, in the chemical industry. Depending on the purpose, industrial floors must meet the most diverse guidelines regarding their load-bearing capacity, resilience, and impermeability.

Areas of use for industrial floors:

• Production
• Chemical Industry
• Hardware stores
• Printing houses
• Assembly
• Airport hangars
• Exhibition halls
• Workshops
• Parking garages
• Packaging plants
• Furniture stores
• Warehouses
• Supermarkets
• Clinics
• Car dealerships
• Laboratories

What specific requirements must industrial floors meet?

Due to the different areas of application, industrial floors have a variety of technical requirements that the floors must meet. To prevent accidents, industrial floors must have high slip resistance and lie flat without height differences at joints. They must also be particularly wear-resistant, resist chemical contamination, be electrically conductive, enable thermal insulation to the soil, and allow proper drainage in wet areas. From an economic perspective, they should also last a long time without loss of function, incur only low maintenance costs, be replaceable during operation, and be easy to clean and maintain.

What stresses are industrial floors exposed to?

If one imagines the workflows in industry and heavy industry, it quickly becomes clear: industrial floors are not treated delicately. Whether driven over by forklifts and heavy trucks or subjected to extreme point loads by the placement of plates and bulk goods: the stresses on an industrial floor cannot be compared to those on normal floors and are therefore a constant challenge for engineers and materials.

What industrial floors must be designed for:

• Continuous forklift and truck traffic
• High storage loads with point loads from shelves and pallets as well as area loads from bulk goods
• Loads from the placement of machines
• Vibration loads due to machine operation
• Mechanical stresses
• Chemical stresses
• Heat and frost
• High temperature fluctuations
• Water pressure from below or above

What materials can industrial floors be made of?

An industrial floor is not the same as an industrial floor. This statement is correct not only regarding individual requirements but also when it comes to the material used. Typically, an industrial floor consists of a substructure or the respective base and a superstructure. In closed halls, the latter consists of a so-called base layer, a separation or sliding layer, a concrete cover, and a surface coating. Outdoors, on F2 and F3 bases, an insulating frost protection layer is additionally applied between the base and the base layer.

For the surface coating, depending on the purpose, a variety of different materials can be used. The most common ones include concrete, screed, epoxy resin, vinyl, PVC, rubber, wood, tiles, metal, and terrazzo.

Why is DUCON Concrete the ideal material for a variety of industrial floors?

DUCON Concrete is always the ideal surface when it comes to the renovation, repair, or reinforcement of floor surfaces. Usually, with floor surface renovation, the old floor must first be laboriously removed. The consequence: dust, dirt, and noise during ongoing production, up to downtimes with production losses and high costs. All of these problems are bypassed by DUCON with its patented overlay technology. Thus, DUCON Overlay is the perfect alternative to demolishing old industrial floors.

DUCON Overlay can be easily applied directly to the old floor surface to be renovated as an ultra-thin structure. During installation, a mat-like steel reinforcement is first laid in combination with a corrosion protection layer made of stainless steel. In the area of joints in the existing floor, an additional reinforcement is used to reliably prevent unwanted cracks in the DUCON surface. Depending on specific requirements, the steel reinforcement can also be additionally anchored. Subsequently, the reinforcement is poured with self-compacting, high-strength mortar. The result is a seamless floor surface only 30 to 60 mm thick, which is fully loadable after just a few days and combines numerous advantages.

Advantages of DUCON Overlay:

• High load-bearing capacity
• High abrasion resistance
• High conductivity
• High durability
• High energy absorption
• Easy installation during ongoing operation

Another advantage of an industrial floor made of DUCON Overlay: Even at a thickness of only 55 millimeters instead of the usual 200, it meets all impermeability requirements according to the Water Resources Act (WHG).

Where can DUCON Overlay be used?

DUCON Overlay is always suitable when the highest efficiency and durability are required simultaneously in indoor or outdoor areas. For example, as an industrial floor for seamless areas up to several thousand square meters, on steel-concrete or asphalt, horizontally and vertically, as static ceiling reinforcement, as WHG floor sealing layer, and for the upgrading of highly stressed industrial areas.