• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.439-450
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• 2003

Flat plate system has been adopted in many buildings constructed recently because of the advantage of reduced floor heights to meet the economical and architectural demands. Structural engineers commonly use the effective beam width model(EBWM) in practical engineering for the analysis of flat plate structures. However, in many cases, when it is difficult to use the EBWM, it is necessary to use a refined finite element model for an accurate analysis. But it would take significant amount of computational time and memory if the entire building structure was subdivided with finer meshes. An efficient analytical method is proposed in this study to obtain accurate results in significantly reduced computational time. The proposed method employs super elements developed using the matrix condensation technique and fictitious beams are used in the development of super elements to enforce the compatibility at the interfaces of super elements. The stiffness degradation of flat plate system considered in the EBWM was taken into account by reducing the elastic modulus of floor slabs in this study. Static and dynamic analyses of example structures were performed and the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method were verified by comparing the results with those of the refined finite element model and the EBWM.