Dynamic Characteristics of Prestressed Waffle Slabs

Abstract

The dynamic response and fatigue behavior of rectangular and skew prestressed concrete waffle slabs are investigated. Such slabs have several advantages over the more conventional slabs when used as decks for concrete bridges and as process floors in semiconductor manufacturing plants. A solution for the dynamic response is derived based on the classical orthotropic plate theory. The theoretical results are verified and substantiated by experimental results obtained from tests on two prestressed concrete waffle slab models. A parametric study is also reported. It is shown that prestressing enhances the natural frequencies and increases the fatigue life of orthotropic slab structures, such as the waffle slab. This enables the designer to avoid resonance under low‐frequency excited sources of vibration, thus using a low dynamic load allowance and hence achieving economy in his design.