A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PROVISIONS

OF ACI: 318-08 AND IS: 456-2000 BUILDING

CODES FOR DESIGN OF FLAT SLABS
Sayed Wafiullah
Division of Reinforced Concrete Structures, Institute of Building Materials and Structures, Faculty of
Civil Engineering, Cracow University of Technology

Abstract

ACI 318-08 and IS: 456-2000 building design codes are the two foremost design codes of
reinforced concrete structures in Afghanistan. A detail comparative study will help
Identify differences of both codes and would substantiate their validity in deigning flat
slabs, hence a comparative analysis of these codes are warranted .

The study will provide insights to the structural design engineers to compare economic and
safety aspects of both codes in the form of loading combination, thickness, deflection,
internal forces magnitudes and required amount of reinforcement.

The study aims to investigate the flexural and shear behavior of reinforced concrete flat
slabs for both codes in the elastic range under the basic principles of limit states design.This
type of study is essential for a complete and proper understanding of building code
requirements and design procedures of flat slabs.

The research is organized in two parts, part 1 commences with an introduction, general
design concept and the advantages of using flat slab as the type of floor construction. After
that, various design approaches for flat slabs are discussed, followed by a comprehensive
study of flexural and shear behavior of the flat slabs. Part 2 consist of A Case study for
Designing multi panel flat slab using ROBOT Finite Element package, Direct Design
Method , and Equivalent Frame Method in order to facilitate parametric comparison of
ACI:318-08 and IS:456-2000

The set of variables, such as amount of reinforcement, bending moment and shear force
values, Deflection magnitude, and slab thickness obtained from the analysis and design
result were compared among each other’s and highlighted the possible advantages and
disadvantages of both codes.

By comparing IS456-2000 and ACI 318-08 we concluded that both codes require the
designer to satisfy the minimum thickness requirement, However designing flat slab based
on IS 456-2000 will provide higher Bending moment, shear force and torsional moments
and accordingly higher area of longitudinal reinforcement area (within the range of 15 %
for column strip ) compared to ACI 318-05.
Moreover Designing based on ACI 318-08 will require to augment the slab with shear
reinforcement, however the thickness in IS 456-2000 is sufficient large and No need for
shear reinforcement.
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