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13.0 CRACKING RULES FOR SLAB

(Ref. Section 9.3: MS EN 1992-1-1: 2010)

To resist cracking of the concrete slabs, EC2 specify details such as minimum area of reinforcement required in a
section and limits to the maximum and minimum spacing of bar.

(a) The minimum area of principal reinforcement is but not less than 0.0013btd, where bt is
the mean width of the tension zone.

(b) The minimum area of secondary reinforcement is 20% As. In areas near support, transverse reinforcement is
not necessary where there is no transverse bending moment.

(c) The spacing of principal reinforcement bars should not exceed three times the overall depth of slab (3h) or
400 mm whichever is the lesser. For secondary reinforcement the spacing should not exceed 3.5h or 450 mm
whichever the lesser. These rules apply for slabs not exceeding 200 mm thick.

14.0 SIMPLIFIED CURTAILMENT RULES FOR SLAB

(Ref. “How to design concrete structures using Eurocode 2”, The Concrete Centre, 2010)

15% 100% 15%

lbd l lbd

(a) Simply Supported

0.2l 0.3l
0.15l ≥ lbd
25% of mid-span steel
50% 100%
40% 100% 40%

0.1l 0.2l
l

(b) Continuous

Figure 2: Simplified detailing rules for slabs

Notes
1. l is the effective length
2. lbd is the design anchorage length.
3. qk ≤ 1.25gk and qk ≤ 5 kN/m2
4. Minimum of two spans required
5. Applies to uniformly distributed loads only.
6. The shortest span must be greater than or equal to 0.85 times the longest span
7. Applies where 20% redistribution has been used.