Freestanding, Lightweight Mezzanine Floors

The subject of mezzanine floor design/detailing (raised in the Verulam column for 21 November 1995) has exercised my brain for some years, and some elementary rules emerged by agreement with fabricators and the local authority I worked for at the time. It was apparent that two of the fabricators were not structural engineers and used safe-load tables/computer programs for their sizing of members. In most cases the
floor comprised 38mm chipboard deck on cold-rolled purlins sitting on main beams or, more usually, cleated to main beam webs. The main beams were supported on cap plates to RHS columns on base plates bolted to an existing groundslab.

I. Anderson