Structural risk management in steel-concrete composite floors

Abstract

Conventional steel-concrete composite floors consist of slabs and beams, where the slab is placed on the steel profiles forming the composite beams. Reduced height composite floors are formed by the embedment of the beams into the slabs in which the slab being supported on the lower flange of the steel profile, which results in the main advantage of using this system, namely the reduction of the total height of the floor. The design of conventional composite floors is performed in a deterministic way, indirectly handling the uncertainties through characteristic values and safety coefficients, without explicitly addressing uncertainty effects in terms of probabilities or risks associated with failures. In this context, structural optimization approaches can be extremely useful tools in the search for better solutions in steel-concrete composite floor design, which is subject to uncertainties and can be understood as a risk management problem since it seeks a trade-off between safety and economy. The main objective of the present project is the development of tools for structural risk optimization of both conventional and reduced height steel-concrete composite floors, taking into account the different failure modes applicable to each type of floor and quantifying the monetary consequences of each failure. This will enable to verify if there is room for improvements of the trade-off between safety and economy. This proposal brings a number of innovative aspects, including innovation in the study of reduced height composite floors, which is still little explored by Brazilian researches despite its great potential of application, and innovation in the application of the structural risk optimization to the composite floors. Thus, the present project represents a significant and original contribution, increasing the level of current scientific knowledge and potentially contributing for application to the industry of steel profiles. (AU)