Much friction between contractors and owners representatives is created because of misunderstanding of the requirements for form removal and reshoring. The contractor is concerned with a fast turnover of form reuse for economy (with safety), whereas the owner wants quality, continued curing for maximum in-place strength, and an adequate strength and modulus of elasticity to minimize initial deflection and cracking. Both want a satisfactory surface.
Satisfactory solutions for all concerned consist of the use of high-early-strength concrete or accelerated curing, or substitution of a means of curing protection other than formwork. The use of field-cured cylinders (Arts. 9.7 and 9.14) in conjunction with appropriate nondestructive in-place strength tests (Art. 9.14) enables owner and contractor representatives to measure the rate of curing to determine the earliest time for safe form removal.
Reshoring or ingenious formwork design that keeps shores separate from surface forms, such as flying forms that are attached to the concrete columns, permits early stripping without premature stress on the concrete. Properly performed, reshoring is ideal from the contractors viewpoint. But the design of reshores several stories in depth becomes very complex. The loads delivered to supporting floors are very difficult to predict and often require a higher order of structural analysis than that of the original design of the finished structure. To evaluate these loads, knowledge is required of the modulus of elasticity Ec of each floor (different), properties of the shores (complicated in some systems by splices), and the initial stress in the shores, where is dependent on how hard the wedges are driven or the number of turns of screw jacks, etc. (Formwork for Concrete, ACI SP-4). When stay-in-place shores are used, reshoring is simpler (because variations in initial stress, which depend on workmanship, are eliminated), and a vertically progressive failure can be averted.
One indirect measure is to read deflections of successive floors at each stage.
With accurate measurements of Ec, load per floor can then be estimated by structural theory. A more direct measure (seldom used) is strain measurement on the shores, usable with metal shores only. On large projects, where formwork cost and cost of failure justify such expense, both types of measurement can be employed.
