Abstract

PRADENA, Mauricio  and  CHAPARRO, Boris. Structural Analysis of Concrete Pavements: Short Slabs in Industrial Floors. Rev Politéc. (Quito) [online]. 2019, vol.43, n.2, pp.45-50. ISSN 2477-8990.

Short slabs are a concrete pavement innovation that represents a change of paradigm in the traditional design (where the number of joints is limited). In this innovative approach, the concrete slab is designed in a way that no more than one set of vehicle wheels is actually on the slab. In this way, the stresses are reduced. The research related with this innovation has been focused in urban and interurban pavements, where the costs have been reduced even until 25%. On the other hand, the traffic demands over industrial floors are different from concrete pavements of streets or highways. In addition, the weather demands are different because a roof covers industrial floors. The objective of the present article is to analyze the stresses of short slabs for industrial floors using finite elements models in order to generate design recommendations. For that, a factorial design including variables as the pavement location, time of construction, slab geometry and traffic is defined. The results show that short slabs can generate significant costs reductions in certain industrial floors, but that they are not necessarily the best option for all the analyzed scenarios. However, short slabs are an attractive alternative for industrial floors commonly used as warehouses.

Keywords : Pavements; Concrete; Short Slabs; Industrial Floors; Warehouses.

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