The essence of structural design is the appropriate usage of material. Unnecessary weight is created by materials that are not significantly contributing to a structure’s stability.
A bird can fly because its bones are made of a hard shell with struts placed inside. The bone’s weight is optimized and at the same time the bone is stable.
Principle of the Cobiax flat slab
Leave out as much concrete as possible whilst maintaining the full flexural strength of the slab and allowing a bi-axial load transfer.
Maintain concrete in the structurally relevant external zones of the cross-section and create as much internal voided volumes as possible.
Materialization of the Cobiax flat slab
Void formers – positioned between the bottom and top reinforcement layers – displace concrete.
The resulting dead-load reduction of up to 35% has a positive impact on the whole structure and allows building material savings.
