DESIGN, PLANNING AND ESTIMATION OF TWO STORAYED BUILDING

ABSTRACT
This report outlines the structural design of a five-story reinforced concrete office building
following ACI 318-11. The framing arrangement and column locations of the building were
provided based on architectural and structural requirements. The structure system of the
office building is a reinforced concrete frame with a one-way slab and beam floor system.
This report covers the design process in the following order: the calculation of the expected
loads on the structure, the design of the slab depth, the estimation of the column sizes, the
design of the slab reinforcement, the design of the T-beam reinforcement for both flexural
and shear, the calculation to check crack control, the calculation to check T-beam deflections
and finally the design of the column reinforcement. Additionally, figures displaying the
placement of the steel rebar in the structure are contained in the report.
The details of the design can be found within the report. The basic design of the office
building includes seven (7) inch slabs throughout, fifteen (15) inch by fifteen (15) inch square
columns and T-beam depths of eighteen (18) inches for the exterior column spans and twenty
(20) inches for the interior column spans. Due to deflection control issues that arose in this
preliminary design, some of the interior beam lines have to be re-designed in further
iterations of this design. The maximum depth of the interior T-beams would be twenty-two
(22 inches). The reinforcement is varied throughout the project depending on necessary loads
and ACI 318-11. The slab reinforcement spacing would also have to be edited in future
designs because it did not comply with ACI 318 crack control limits. All beams were
designed to be under-reinforced beams in order to provide extensive warning before failure
(should it ever occur) and all beams were design for shear in order to avoid a sudden and
catastrophic failure. Finally, the column reinforcement was designed under two different
loading conditions, the first of which maximized both the axial and moment in the column
and the second which maximized the moment but minimized the axial loads for a maximum
eccentricity.

INTRODUCTION

The framing plan of the five-story reinforced concrete building was provided and can be seen
in Figure 1. As shown in the framing plan, the building is six bays by three bays. The outer
bays along the six-bay side are 14 feet center-to-center while the inner bays along the six-bay
side are 16 feet center-to-center. The outer bays along the three-bay side are 25 feet centerto-center while the inner bay along the three-bay side is 30 feet center-to-center. The framing
plan also denotes one-way slabs with T-beams that run along the six-bay columns.
Design The design of the five-story reinforced concrete structure entailed a number of steps
and calculations. Each section listed below describes one step in the process of the design.
Attached to the end of this report are sample hand calculations for each step in the design
process.
Slab Thickness The slab thickness was determined to be seven (7) inches by using Table
9.5(a) in ACI 318. The exterior spans required seven-inch slab thickness, which was slightly
larger than the slab thickness requirement for the interior spans. For ease of construction and
economical purposes, a slab thickness of seven inches was used throughout the entire
building.
Loads The loads were calculated using ASCE 7 and the load combinations in Table 1.2 of
ACI 318.
For the floors, the dead loads included the load from the mechanical equipment and the
ceiling (15 psf) and the load from the slab (87.5 psf). The live load for the floors was 50 psf
while the partition loading (which was also considered a live load) was 20 psf. The dead
loads for the roof included the load from the mechanical equipment and the ceiling (15 psf),
the load from the roofing material (7 psf) and load from the slab (87.5 psf). The live load for
the roof was comprised of the snow load only (30 psf). The load for the slabs was calculated
by multiplying the slab thickness by the unit weight of concrete (150 psf).
The load combination from Table 1.2 of ACI 318 consisted of a load factor of 1.2 for the dead
loads and 1.6 for the live loads. Using this load combination, the roof load was found to be
179.4 psf and the floor load was found to be 235 psf.

Table 1 and 2 in the Appendix B contain the breakdown of the load design along with the
final loading values for both the roof and the floor.
Estimation of the Column Size The first step in the process of determining the column size
was the calculation of the tributary area of the most heavily loaded column, which in this
building plan was a column in the interior section of the building, (i.e. C3), which resulted in
a tributary area of 440 ft2.
The loading of the roof and four floors was multiplied by this tributary area to determine the
factored load experience by the ground story column. The area of the concrete needed to
support the calculated force was then calculated, taking into account both the strength of the
concrete and the steel. Appropriate overall strength reduction factors were included to not
only provide a further factor of safety but also account for eccentric loading of the column. It
was also assumed that 2% of the area of the column was steel. Using this assumption, the
overall area of the column was 209 in2.
Using a square cross-section, the column width and depth were chosen to be fifteen (15)
inches. It should be noted that this calculation was for preliminary design only and would be
checked later in the design process.
Slab Design The slabs were primarily designed with reinforcing steel parallel to the
numerical grid lines. This is because the floor system is a one-way slab, which means that
bending will occur between the two supporting beams in a parabolic shape, with the largest
moments being at the top of the slab near the supports and at the bottom of the slabs at the
mid-spans. Steel was also provided in the transverse direction to provide resistance to the
temperature and shrinkage cracks in the tension regions.
The first step in the slab design was to find the effective span length. For negative moments,
the effective span length is taken as the average of the two adjacent clear spans while for
positive moments the effective span length is the given slabs clear span. Next, the ACI
moment coefficients were found for a spandrel slab with two or more spans. The spandrel
slab was used because the majority of the slab acts as a spandrel (i.e. the slab was just
supported by beams). Since the portion of the slab that was supported just by the beams is so
much greater than the portion of the slab that is supported by the columns, the spandrel
condition was used for the moment coefficient. Following ACI 318, the moments were found
for the various critical cross sections along the slab.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Using ACI 318, a preliminary design of a five-story office reinforced concrete office
building was completed. Overall, the structure is a very efficient building with only a couple
of edits needed in future iterations of the design. It was determined that the design did not
fully comply with ACI 318 code, but that these flaws would be revised in future edits to the
overall design. The loads for the structure were determined from ASCE 7 with the load
combinations from ACI 318. The columns were determined to be fifteen (15) inches by

fifteen (15) inches with a slab thickness of seven (7) inches and T-beam depths that varied
from eighteen (18) inches to twenty (20) inches in the first design. These T-beam depths
would be increased for selected beam lines up to twenty-two (22) inches for deflection
control reasons. The chosen T-beam flexural reinforcement was verified through crack
control checks and strength checks, as was the T-beam shear reinforcement. However, the
slab reinforcement did not comply the ACI 318 crack control standards. Therefore, the size
and spacing of the slab reinforcing would have to be edited in the
next design check to make sure the spacing was no more than twelve (12) inches. Finally, the
reinforcement in the columns varied throughout the structure with the maximum
reinforcement in the top of the exterior column lines (due to high bending) and at the bottom
of the interior columns lines (due to large axial loads). The ties for the columns were also
designed according to ACI 318. Because the minimum steel reinforcement according to ACI
318 was used for the columns, these columns should be made smaller in future iterations of
the design so the structure can be more efficient.
The next step in this design project would be to complete a number of iterations on the design
until it compiles with ACI 318.

RECOMMENDATIONS

This design is only a preliminary design for this reinforced concrete building and several
further revisions are still needed for this design to be complete. In future revisions to this
building, there are a handful of recommendations that I would make.
The first is to reduce the slab reinforcement to #3 bars, which would mean a closer spacing.
This would be the most economic solution to the problem with the spacing of the slab
reinforcement that arose when checking the crack control. Whenever a design is forced to
use a minimum value in the code, which was the case in the slab spacing, that design is
typically not as economical as it could be. In this case, simply reducing the spacing while still
using #4 bars would not be economical. Using a #3 bar at a smaller spacing would result in a
more efficient design, as less material would be used.
Additionally, I would increase the depth of the T-beams under floor loading on beam lines B
and F to twenty (20) inches and then I would increase the depth of the T-beams under floor
loading on beam lines C, D and E to twenty-one (21) or twenty (22) inches. These changes
would result in all the T-beams being in compliance with ACI 318 deflection limits.
Finally, since the column reinforcement was commonly governed by the ACI minimum, in
future iterations I would decrease the column sizes so that the columns would be more
efficient and have closer to 4% steel instead of the minimum 1% steel. As stated above,

whenever the design is limited by the ACI minimum, it means there is a more efficient way to
the design the structure. In this case it would be smaller column sizes and more column steel
reinforcement.