Comparative study of the dimensioning of a floor of solid slabs using elastic, plastic, and numerical analysis

Abstract

A reinforced concrete structure design is carried out based on structural analysis results. From this, the engineer defines the most appropriate design technique for each type of building. Due to the importance of structural analysis, this paper proposed to carry out the analysis, dimensioning, and detailing of a floor of massive slabs, through three distinct methodologies, consisting of an elastic analysis, based on the Theory of Grids for deformable supports, a plastic analysis based on the Theory of Rupture Lines, and a numerical analysis by the Finite Element Method (FEM), carried out using the SAP2000 software. The accomplishment of this research had as its main objective to evaluate the steel consumption demanded by each analysis methodology used, and to establish a comparative study about the soliciting efforts determined by the three methods of structural analysis. Thus, when analyzing the results, there were large discrepancies between the bending moments presented in each analysis methodology. Also, regarding steel consumption, there were considerable savings for the plastic model compared to the elastic model, and taking the numerical model as a parameter, an 11.52% higher steel consumption was observed for the elastic calculation.

Keywords

• analysis
• massive slabs
• methods
• sizing
• sap2000