One of the main goals of a good and effective structural design is to decrease, as far as possible, the self-weight of structures, because they must carry the service load. This is especially important for reinforced concrete (RC) structures, as the self-weight of the material is substantial. For RC structures it is furthermore important that the whole structure or most of the structural elements are under compression with small eccentricities. Continuous spatial concrete structures satisfy the above-mentioned requirements. It is shown in this book that a span of a spatial structure is practically independent of its thickness and is a function of its geometry. It is also important to define which structure can be called a spatial one. Such a definition is given in the book and based on this definition, five types of spatial concrete structures were selected: translation shells with positive Gaussian curvature, long convex cylindrical shells, hyperbolic paraboloid shells, domes, and long folders. To demonstrate the complex research, results of experimental, analytical, and numerical evaluation of a real RC dome are presented and discussed. The book is suitable for structural engineers, students, researchers and faculty members at universities.

One of the main goals of a good and effective structural design is to decrease, as far as possible, the self-weight of structures, because they must carry the service load. This is especially important for reinforced concrete (RC) structures, as the self-weight of the material is substantial. For RC structures it is furthermore important that the whole structure or most of the structural elements are under compression with small eccentricities. Continuous spatial concrete structures satisfy the above-mentioned requirements. It is shown in this book that a span of a spatial structure is practically independent of its thickness and is a function of its geometry. It is also important to define which structure can be called a spatial one. Such a definition is given in the book and based on this definition, five types of spatial concrete structures were selected: translation shells with positive Gaussian curvature, long convex cylindrical shells, hyperbolic paraboloid shells, domes, and long folders. To demonstrate the complex research, results of experimental, analytical, and numerical evaluation of a real RC dome are presented and discussed. The book is suitable for structural engineers, students, researchers and faculty members at universities.

This monograph analyses experimental and theoretical investigations in the field of reinforced concrete structures and elements from the viewpoint of a new mini-max principle and application of this principle for calculation of forces, strengths and critical buckling loads in RC shells, columns, plates, etc. The basis of the mini-max principle was developed during solving a problem of finding an RC shell load bearing capacity via a kinematic method. Forming the internal forces' fields at the plastic stage of the structure leads to a problem, related to interaction between the normal forces and bending moments, but at this stage the compressed shell section has an unknown eccentricity. Therefore an additional equation should be found for separating the above-mentioned forces. The following idea was proposed: the section compressed zone depth (static parameter) should be selected so that the maximum load bearing capacity of the structure is realized simultaneously with minimizing the external load the failure zone dimension (kinematic parameter). Development of this idea resulted in formulating the mini-max principle. The essence of this principle is that real load bearing capacity of the structure is calculated (without under- and over-estimation). With this aim it is proposed to use in the same calculation both extreme features of failure load. At the same time just one method is used (static or kinematic). Thus, the mini-max principle became a way for realizing the unity theorem of the limit equilibrium method, which joints the static and kinematic approaches. The mini-max principle enabled to solve some problems in load bearing capacity of structures that had no solutions or were solved approximately. Additionally, the principle was used for solving some new problems in calculation of RC shells.