Design of Industrial Floors—Review of Guidelines, Special Designing Issues (Part 1)

We are placing more and more emphasis on the design of industrial floors when designing the structure of buildings. Currently there are only a few approved designing guidelines that practicing engineers can use to easily design industrial floors. Rather the best practice is that the manufacturers of certain products (concrete fibre reinforcement, dilatation joints) carry out the more or less professional designing. In addition, there are numerous incurring questions in connection with applying the internationally approved guidelines in terms of applicability and reliability. Our paper is based on years of experience in designing industrial floors. In the first part the main guidelines, their characteristics and opportunities of application are discussed. In the second part we take a closer look at the most common TR34 British guideline, presenting its most significant designing formulas, which support engineering practitioners in carrying out the design of industrial floors on their own. In the third part we demonstrate advanced finite element analyses, comparing results with real sized experiments and with results of the guidelines.