Plate Dowel

Summary

Plate Dowel - Plate dowels are steel plates used to provide load transfer at a joint whilst still allowing free movement.

Technical Information

Plate dowels were introduced later than bar dowels but are now much more popular for the construction of new slabs due to their comparative ease of installation.

A standard unarmoured construction joint (or day joint) would be installed in the following manner:

A plastic dowel sleeve is cast into one panel.
Once the sleeve is set, a plate is installed into the sleeve.
The next panel is placed.

The majority of armoured joint systems come with pre-installed plate dowels, with a plastic debonding sleeve fitted to one side.

Plate dowels come in a variety of sizes (dependant on manufacturer / supplier), but are typically in the order of 150x150x8mm.

Honeycombing is a potential issue when using plate dowels, whereby the concrete doesn’t properly fill the space below the dowel, leading to a series of voids once set. This problem can be caused by too stiff a concrete mix or improper compaction and can lower the dowel’s shear resistance, which could lead to dowel bursting out of the slab.