Volume 5Enero - Diciembre 2015

The Technical Standards Institute of Costa Rica (INTECO) was created in 1987 in response to a Costa Rican need for technical standardization. INTECO has greatly evolved over the years developing a very wide range of regulations with around 30 technical committees and more than 500 published standards. Within these committees is the "CTN 04 bituminous mixtures and asphalts binders” which belongs to the category of Asphalt Mixtures, developed in 2004 thanks to the efforts of LanammeUCR.

This document includes a summary of each INTECO standard related to asphalt mixes, with illustrative images of equipment and professional LanammeUCR recommendations to ensure the correct application of these processes. This summary also includes three comparative tables wth the most important differences present in: equipment, procedures and precision and bias between the latest AASHTO and ASTM bituminous mixtures standards and their equivalent to INTECO standard.

These methods have not being updated in Costa Rica in more than seven years, so the former members of the technical committee as well as anyone in the field are invited to be part of a new team to not only update these rules but also create new ones.

This paper discusses the relationship between the Costa Rican Seismic Code 2010 (CSCR-10) specifications and the research generated as result of those specifications. The use of timber for construction in Costa Rica has been growing since 2000, including the development of industrialized products such as structural laminated timber (GLULAM) and plywood. Consequently, the CSCR began to work on a chapter for the CSCR-10, in which the specification for structural timber is developed. The objective of this paper is to highlight the impact that the design codes and standard specification have had in the development of applied research in the field of design and construction of timber structures.

To establish this relationship, the sections of the CSCR-10 are explained and then, the most relevant investigations are described. Finally, it is concluded that the CSCR has a great impact in the development of research of structural timber in Costa Rica. The previous is reflected on the eight investigations that have been carried out in a period of eight years.

The Technical Standards Institute of Costa Rica (INTECO) was created in 1987 in response to a Costa Rican need for technical standardization. INTECO has greatly evolved over the years developing a very wide range of regulations with around 30 technical committees and more than 500 published standards. Within these committees is the "CTN 04 Bituminous Mixtures and Asphalts Binders” which belongs to the category of Asphalt Mixtures, developed in 2004 thanks to the efforts of LanammeUCR.

This document includes a summary of each INTECO standard related to Asphalt Mixes, with illustrative images of equipment and recommendations by professionals of LanammeUCR to ensure the correct application of these processes. This summary also includes three comparative tables with the most important differences of equipment, procedures and precision and bias between the latest AASHTO and ASTM bituminous mixtures standards and their equivalent to INTECO standard.

These methods have not being updated in Costa Rica in more than seven years, so the former members of the technical committee as well as anyone in the field are invited to be part of a new team to not only update these rules but also create new ones.

In Costa Rica, the prefabricated system of columns and horizontal tiles is one of the most used options in social housing projects developed by the BAHNVI. The BAHNVI is the mortgage housing bank of Costa Rica, it is in charge of assigning housing credits financed by the Government of Costa Rica to vulnerable sectors of the population in order to fulfill their housing needs. As a direct consequence, the supply of this product has increased considerably in recent years by small and medium-sized companies distributed throughout the national territory. As a way to ensure the good quality of these products the Technical Standards Institute of Costa Rica, INTECO, has developed a standard for prefabricated concrete elements for the construction of single-family housing using the system of columns and horizontal tiles. The first edition of this standard was published in 2013 and in February 2017 the second edition was published. This last edition exposes changes in normative aspects, experimental methods and sampling methods. Since the publication of the first edition of the standard, there has been a significant increase in the quality of the verification of this products and a great develop in research work on the subject. This paper describes the main national researches developed in the field and its relation with the evolution of technical regulations.