A general equation for the flexural – membrane behaviour of rigid – plastic rc square slabs having variously restrained edges

Abstract EN

Uniformly loaded rigid–plastic reinforced concrete (RC) square slabs having six different cases of boundary restraints have been recently analyzed (1) under the combined effect of bending and membrane action, and a separate load–deflection relationship for each slab case has been obtained.

In this paper, the load–deflection behaviour of all these six slab cases is expressed in one single compact equation as a function of the slab material properties and the configuration of the slab boundary restraints.

The application of the proposed equation in the analysis of a typical RC Square slab indicates that when two or more edges of the slab are restrained against rotation and horizontal translation the live load carrying capacity of the slab can reach up to five times that suggested by the simple yield line theory.