Floor Slabs

A Floor Slab is basically composed of a bearing structure and a flooring structure. Sometimes there is also a dropped ceiling installed at the bottom to complete the slab. Main functions of a floor slab within a building are transmission of force, sound insulation and fire protection.

Its main interfaces with the building are its supports, usually walls or columns. Furthermore, a floor slab separates two rooms from each other.

Ontological Modeling

To model an ontology describing a floor slab, its three main components were considered: the bearing structure, the flooring and the dropped ceiling structure, which in this case is meant to describe any sort of facing or sub-slab structure. Additionally, a floor slab refers to some requirements to meet.

Flooring and dropped ceiling are devided further into their components, like a substructure and facing. The bearing structure has subclasses representing the supports (line and point supports), and below that the way that forces are transmitted. Classyfied by this structure actual concepts for floors slabs are introduced as classes,  for example a t-beam ceiling or a point supported flat slab. Additionally, such a class can refer to a girder type and must refer a material. Individuals are acutal could-be-build floor slabs with a distinct choice of material and measurements.

Parametric Modeling

A beam ceiling was considered for a parametric model. A beam ceiling consists of girders and planking supported by the former. The following parameters are introduced: the measurements of girders and planking, the number of girders to consider in form of planking fields, material values and live load.

From these parameters, a model of a beam ceiling is derived, showing the beams and the planking. Furthermore, some simple stress analysis is performed. It can be used to estimate the overall performence of the slab and thereby evaluate the model.