Abstract
Free-standing, foundationless jib cranes mounted directly on slab-on-grade (SOG) floors are commonly needed in various industries for material handling. However, since industrial floors are subject to stringent serviceability requirements and sudden slab failure can result in dropped loads which can endanger lives, ensuring an existing slab can support a crane is critical. This is a challenging problem since typical industrial floors are thin (< 200 mm) and unreinforced or lightly reinforced for crack width control only. Furthermore, it is generally not possible to accurately characterize the soil support. Currently, there are no design standards or guidelines for slab-mounted cranes. Free-standing jib cranes transfer concentrated vertical loads and overturning moments to the slab, but existing concrete floor design standards only consider static vehicle forces from wheel loads and storage racks. In this study, detailed finite element (FE) models are used to investigate the response of unreinforced or lightly reinforced concrete SOG under jib crane loads. The SOG is modelled as a 5 m square plate on a semi-infinite soil layer idealized as a homogenous, isotropic, and linear elastic half-space. This paper presents the results of a preliminary study on the effect of the soil layer and validates the FE model against Westergaard’s analytical solutions.
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