Designing Laterally Loaded RC Stiffened Plates : Energy Balance Concept

Abstract EN

Plates are most widely used structural systems to build and/or enclose the space along with some other structural elements, namely, walls, columns, and so forth.

in any building.

Design procedure for proportioning plates has been recommended in various design codes based upon empirical relations and some factors found on basis of the results of an extensive series of tests and well-established performance record of various plate/slab systems constructed in the past.

These guidelines have a number of inherent limitations in the form of assumptions, thereby, forcing the designers to proportion the plate system within the domain of these limitations.

A procedure to design reinforced concrete stiffened-plates is presented using an energy-balance concept and it can be used for both a single panel as well as multipanel rectangular plate system with any value of aspect ratio, number of panels, and orthotropy.

To validate the results from the proposed design procedure, these are compared with the results from well-established literature on the plate analysis and are found to be in good agreement.

Working procedure is illustrated with the help of design examples.