Practical Approach to Two-Way Slab Design

For routine design with reasonably regular layouts and uniform load conditions, essentially within limitations of the 1963 Code empirical method, simple approximations can result in trial dimensions often satisfactory for initial design. The writer presents a number of such short cuts and suggests others based upon a study of the computer-produced designs over the usual range of span and load, as tabulated in the 1973 CRSI Handbook. Herein a practical design approach is implicitly defined as one that does not require more design time than a consulting engineer can afford or that does not produce added value to the client beyond the cost of the design time. References to applicable sections of the 1971 ACI Code and its Commentary are given. No further references are given because the Commentary contains an up-to-date bibliography, and because few published papers deal with the problem of reducing unnecessary design time and cost.