Foundation Design for a High Bay Warehouse with a Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete Slab

SUMMARY: The high bay warehouse at the Carlsberg brewery in Fredericia, Denmark, is 40 m high and is founded with a 83 x 116 m foundation slab on clay till and sand layers. Due to the wind loads on the tall building, the edges of the foundation require 80 cm and 60 cm thick con ventionally reinforced concrete slabs, while a 69 x 77 m and 40 cm thick s teel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) slab forms the inner part of the fo undation. Steel fibre reinforcement has been chosen mainly due to approximately 15 % lower construction costs than a comparable solution with conventional rebar reinforcement. The SFRC slab is cast in 6 panels di vided by free-movement joints with shear dowels. It has to be designed for closely spaced 250 kN characteristic long-term loads for complete filling of the racks. The design has been based on a German SFRC design guideline and makes use of 3D finite element soil-structure interaction calculations app lying elasto-plastic material models for both the slab and the soil.