Failure mechanism of FRC slabs on nonlocal ground

The present work deals with the mechanical behavior of a large FRC slab bilaterally supported by a non-local soil. The slab is modelled as a ductile Kirchhoff plate laying on a two-parameter elastic and transversally loaded by a uniform pressure applied on a circular area, thus making the problem axisymmetric. This layout covers a wide array of practical applications of fiber reinforced concrete in structural and civil engineering related to the assessment of the load carrying capacity of industrial floors, roads, airfield pavements and building foundations. The problem is governed by a fourth order linear ODE with variable coefficients, whose solution has been obtained in power series by using the Frobenius method. The analysis allows us to evaluate the influence of the size of the loaded area and the relative stiffness of the slab/subgrade system on the collapse mechanism and the corresponding load carrying capacity, as well as on the distributions of displacement, rotation, bending moments, shear force and contact pressure at the onset of collapse