Punching Shear of Flat Slabs

The use of flat slabs in constructions due to its many functional and economic advantages is wide-spread. Behavior of flat slabs in shear and flexure is a fairly complex problem. Therefore, the punching shear failure belongs to one of the most critical aspects in the design of concrete buildings. Over the last decades several buildings have collapsed due to the failure of the punching shear strength, resulting in loss of lives and financial damages. These disasters revealed gaps in the current (or former) design codes and recommendations. As a part of theoretical framework of the dissertation a method for predicting the punching shear strength of flat slabs was developed. Several experiments on scaled down slabs were conducted in order to verify the proposed method and for optimization of its parameters. Proposed method in development predicts the punching shear for slabs without shear reinforcement according to the EC2 and replaces the area of the shear crack with a system of struts and ties