CURVED STRUCTURES IN WAFFLE SLAB CONSTRUCTION

Horizontally-curved concrete waffle slab structures are sometimes used as superstructures of bridges and as floor slabs in large exhibition halls. The idealization of a horizontally-curved wide structure as a c urved beam or an assemblage of curved beams leads to inaccurate result s. Although the finite element technique can be used to analyse the st ructural response of horizontally-curved structures, trial solutions h ave shown that the finite difference method is a more attractive alter native since it requires fewer equations. In using this latter method accurate estimates of the structure's orthotropic rigidities are requi red. An analytical study is undertaken to investigate the structural e fficiency of a curved waffle slab system in comparison with convention al alternatives, such as the solid slab and girder-slab systems. The f easibility of using an equivalent orthotropic plate system to predict the elastic behaviour of curved concrete waffle slab structures is exa mined. The analytical results are verified and substantiated by tests on horizontally curved concrete waffle slab models subjected to concen trated and uniformly distributed loads.