A Novel Integrated Approach to Solve Industrial Ground Floor Design Problems

Abstract

The ground floors of buildings usually have high loads from racks and other storage equipment in industrial buildings and logistics centers. Such types of buildings commonly require lift trucks. Therefore, there are special requirements for flatness tolerance across and along the driving track of truck lifts. Structural design solutions must be optimized and sustainable. The article reviews the behavior of soils and the importance of the actual behavior assessment of soils during the design of the ground floor on the elastic subgrade. The behavior of the ground floor’s areas above pile foundations that support the building’s columns is essential. Calculation results show the impact of subgrade stiffness on the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) floor slab, especially in areas above pile foundations, where the stiffness of subgrade is much higher. The research provides a solution to achieve the required level of settlement dissimilarity in areas where there are piles underneath a building slab under the columns. The paper proposes a new integrated method for the evaluation of the subgrade reaction coefficient above the pile cap. The proposed method optimizes design time and eliminates the need for specialized geotechnical software. Obtained results confirmed the efficiency of the proposed design method.

The Engineering Method for Unifying Ground Floor Slab Settlements

“…Investigations have shown that by increasing the thickness of the slab, the difference of the ground slab settlements reduces. Nevertheless, the maximum settlements decrease not significantly (Turskis et al, 2020). Applying such an engineering solution, the amount of concrete will increase significantly as well.…”

“…The analysis of the settlements and distribution of bending moments in the modelled fragment "A" has shown that by deepening the piles' foundation and equalizing the stiffness of the subgrade, it is possible not only to achieve the requirements of flatness, but also to reduce the amounts of slab reinforcement. Full-width floor slab settlements calculation (Turskis et al, 2020) tasks were performed using popular structural analysis software, that is based on subgrade reaction theory. Two-parameter theory models were used for the calculations.…”