Analysis and design of waffle slabs with different boundary conditions

摘要

When a large space within a building needs to be covered without hindrance and supports, architects often deploy waffle slabs to construct floors and ceilings. Structural designers analyse such slabs, assuming the grid-work as simply supported system (all four edges) and deriving solutions based on displacement compatibility of beams or plates to arrive at an approximate solution or performing a detailed finite element analysis (FEM) of the slab beam system using any of the generalized finite element software available in the market. This is so because no analytical solution or quick computational tool exists, except for the case of slabs with all edges simply supported. This paper proposes a semi analytical method for the analysis of waffle slab with any arbitrary boundary conditions; fixed, free and simply supported. To validate the results, selected cases are compared with finite element analysis.