Abstract
A full-scale one-way reinforced concrete joist floor with wide-shallow beams (WSB) was tested to investigate its behavior under gravity loading. The floor was studied numerically using a nonlinear finite element to establish the effect of floor beam flexibility on its behavior The numerical results were experimentally verified and an additional floor with stiff beams was numerically analyzed for comparison. The distribution of moments in the WSB floor was found to not match with what is usually assumed in design practice. Accordingly, a design procedure was proposed for providing the longitudinal and lateral distributions of moments in WSB floor systems. The proposed procedure was applied to the investigated WSB floor which showed good agreement with the distributions of moments obtained from the analysis incorporating nonlinear finite elements.