Some Aspects of Structural Design of Massive Foundations for New Power Plant Buildings

Design of foundations for the large industrial buildings is complex and time-consuming, above all due to great number of the load combinations and the coexistent influences of numerous equipment and installations. Reliable foundation of the huge power plant buildings is significantly important, due to strategic role of this type of engineering objects in the national economy. Due to importance of the investment and its great costs, all power plant buildings are classified to the third geotechnical category regardless of the soil conditions. The greatest and the heaviest from buildings in the coal power plant is the boiler house which is very often considered as the main building. Adequate foundations of this building shall fulfill safety requirements for the structure as well as shall provide the proper cooperation between neighboring objects and the equipment. The important criterion which ensures adequate work of the equipment is to fulfill rigorous values of total, vertical displacements of the foundation, as well as to fulfill strict requirements towards differential settlements between various foundation points. In this paper, some aspects of structural design of the massive, reinforced concrete slab foundations are presented. All from these foundation slabs have been recently built in Poland. Their extraordinary plane dimensions equal from approx. 50×80 m to approx. 100×100 m (without any expansion joints). It was presented interaction between the slab foundation and soil in largely diversified geotechnical conditions and for different variants of the foundations.