IRREGULAR FLAT SLABS DESIGNED ACCORDING （不规则的平面板设计）.pdf

rd Morley Symposium on Concrete Plasticity and its Application. University of Cambridge 23 July, 2007 IRREGULAR FLAT SLABS DESIGNED ACCORDING TO STRUCTURAL MEMBRANE APPROACH K. BASKARAN Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka Keywords: flat slab, membrane, bimoment. 1 INTRODUCTION Flat slabs are less labour intensive, simplify the installation of services and can accommodate more floors within restricted heights. However, the span influencing their design is the longest and they require more steel compared to two-way slabs. Other drawbacks of flat slabs are vulnerability to punching shear failure and higher deflections. To avoid punching shear failure drop panels, column heads or shear reinforcement are used. If span in flat slabs is reduced then both deflection and punching shear problems can be avoided. However, architects prefer to have few exposed columns in usable areas. This inevitably leads to columns in an irregular layout, hidden inside partitions or walls [1]. Flat slab construction with columns in an irregular layout is a viable solution in constructing buildings that satisfy their functional requirements in urban environments. The purpose of this paper is three fold. One is to encourage the application of the structural membrane approach to design flat slabs on non-rectangular column grid by providing experimental evidence [2,3]. Second is to encourage more research on bimoment concepts. Third is to leave some carefully performed experimental evidence for the research community to be used in validating structural assessment tools like nonlinear finite element or yield