CVE20003, Design of Concrete Structures
Project 1 – Analysis of a multistorey concrete building
Semester 2, 2019
Due date: 10th September 2019
Group Project: No more than 4 members per group.
Weighting: 15%
A five story building is to be designed and constructed in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. A preliminary assessment by
the engineer has nominated that a concrete framed building would be most suitable. The engineer has nominated the
geometry of the structure as per figures 1-4 below. It is proposed that each floor be comprised of a suspended beam and
slab system consisting of reinforced concrete (RC) beams (1200mm wide x 600mm deep along grid C and 1200mm
wide x 450mm deep along grids 1 & 2) spanning between 550mm x 550mm RC columns. The beams will be supporting
a one way spanning RC slab. It is proposed that a 180 mm thick RC slab is required to span between the beams (refer
figure 1).
The beams and columns will be rigidly connected using steel reinforcement and should be designed as a moment
resisting frame to resist the horizontal forces which will be imposed on the structure due to wind actions (Wu) in the
east-west direction (parallel with grid lines 1-3). The wind loads will be applied to the external faces of 250mm thick
precast concrete shear walls in the easterly direction as shown in figures 1 and 2. The precast concrete 250mm thick
shear walls will be design to take the horizontal loads from wind actions in the north-south directions. As a result, the
beams, slabs and columns are not required to be designed for horizontal loads in the north-south directions (parallel to
grid lines A-D). The 250mm thick shear wall will be connected to the concrete beams and slabs using steel dowel bars
at each level (refer detail A). There is a 100mm gap between the walls and the face of the edge columns, therefore the
columns will only experience horizontal loads from the beams connected to them and the walls will not transfer loads
to the columns directly along their height. The walls will not support the beams or slabs vertically and it can be assumed
that all the vertical loads will be transferred from the beams to the columns. However, the walls are capable of supporting
their own self-weight since they are tied into footings at the base and can be assumed to have no out of plane flexural
stiffness to resist horizontal loading in the out of plane east-west direction. I.e the wall can only transfer horizontal wind
loads in the east-west direction to the beams at each level and do not contribute to providing any resistance the horizontal
loads in the east-west direction. The columns are fully fixed into footings at their base and footing to column connection
can be assumed as rigid for design purposes.