In a continuous drive for product improvement, specialist designer, manufacturer and supplier of structural and precast concrete construction elements Peikko South Africa has introduced the HULCO range of anchor bolts.

This makes the company a good choice for securely anchoring concrete or steel structures or machinery into concrete base structures such as foundations, slabs, base columns, columns or walls.

HULCO anchor bolts can be assembled onsite and have relatively short anchorage lengths. They are particularly suited to shallow structures such as slabs and beams, and provide a cost-efficient solution with “remarkable load-bearing capacities” for heavy-duty bolted connections.

The high-performance construction elements are embedded in concrete and attached using nuts and washers to the structures or base plates. The addition of nonshrinking grout enhances the bond between the bolted connected structure and the base structure, acting as reinforced concrete, providing high load-bearing capacities for heavy-duty connections in demanding applications.

The HULCO product range – available in a choice of standard sizes of 30 mm, 36 mm, 39 mm, 45 mm, and 52 mm – is compatible with Peikko’s BOLDA Column Shoes and SUMO Wall Shoes, enabling a wide range of precast connections.

The anchor bolts bear the European Commission CE mark and are European Technical Assessment-certified. They are designed to resist various forces including axial, shear, tensile and compressive forces, bending moments, and fire.

The product is available in a choice of different coatings including uncoated, ECO, or hot-dip galvanised options, providing flexibility to suit different project requirements and environments.

The product is designed for industrial construction projects, with the unit’s simple design accelerating onsite erection, while its compact packaging ensures optimal use of truck space during transportation.

The bolts’ advanced material composition combines light weight with high strength, further aiding transportation and handling.

Moreover, Peikko includes reusable installation templates and provides the new Peikko Designer BOLTED CONNECTION software for design assistance free of charge. The Peikko Designer is a new cloud-based design tool that does not require any installations or downloads, and enables users to benefit from automatic updates.

Its simple and intuitive user interface ensures a good user experience throughout the design process, and the software features -  among other improvements - reporting and calculation updates, and gives the user more freedom by enabling the reliable and standardised design of architectural shapes that “deviate from the mainstream”.

The new Peikko Designer BOLTED CONNECTION also allows for inspecting the load capacities more visually, thanks to the new three-dimensional capacity graphs.

Additionally, the tool offers more options for visualising results while also leaving room for interpretation. Torsion calculation is one of the new standard features.

The renewed design tool was released together with HULCO, and updates and extensions for the software are expected throughout 2024. The current version has all the basic characteristics needed to successfully design bolted column connections while it is available in EN Eurocode.

Future updates to the tool will add support for supplementary rebars, fire stage calculations, and national annexes with all Peikko’s design tools cloud-based and easily accessible with a single login and credentials.