Numerical and experimental study of a waffle slab designed to serve as a tennis court floor

Resumo

Waffle slabs have become a recent demand for structural designers, as cost- and time saving structures, in spite of their laborious numerical modeling. To better understand the behavior of reinforced concrete ribbed slabs, and more realistically quantify stresses and displacements, a real scale waffle slab was tested. The structure, designed to serve as a tennis court, was submitted to a total load of 12 kN/m2 and instrumented for measuring strains and deflection on different points. The test loading process used the existing constructive base filling material and carried out readings with different load arrangements, throughout the regular constructive stages. The numerical analysis was made using a matricial grillage model and a finite element model. The numerical deflections presented good estimate values in comparison to the experimental ones and the measured strains defined the presence of bending moments compatible with those obtained by both numerical models.