Numerical and experimental study of a waffle slab designed to serve as a tennis court floor

Reinforced concrete waffle slabs have become a common option for designers due to a need of rationalization in construction with reduction in costs and deadlines. To better understand the behavior of this structural system, and more realistically quantify stresses and displacements, a full scale waffle slab was tested. The structure, designed to serve as a tennis court floor, was submitted to a load of 12 kN/m² and instrumented to measure strains and deflections at different locations. The loading process used the floor's constructive base filling material and readings were taken at different loading stages and arrangements during the floor's construction. Test data was compared to results obtained from the matrix analysis program Sistema Computacional TQS v11.0 and from the finite element model program SAP2000 v14.2.2. Slab behavior was as expected, with deflection and bending moments close to those determined by the numerical analysis.