Ductility reinforcement for flat slabs in seismic areas

The reinforcement concept ‘ductility reinforcement’ has previously been shown to give flat slabs such extremely ductile behaviour that the punching failure mode for gravity loading can be considered safely eliminated. That concept is now tested for imposed cyclic storey drift during earthquakes and found to be capable of resisting even severe earthquakes without any additional precautions than those already taken for normal gravity loading. The specimens were loaded with gravity load up to about 75% of their flexural yield capacity in order to simulate the ultimate limit load case involving seismic loads. Design recommendations are given based on these findings, where assessment of transferred moment between slab and column as currently dictated by North American practice is not required.