The paper presents the description of structure and the selected problems of the technical condition, as well as the strength analysis of the thin-walled reinforced concrete shell which has been making a covering of the main hall of the Gdynia Seaport Building through the last 80 years. The rectangle projection of four single curvature shells of the dome was shaped out of mutual perpendicular intersection of two cylindrical shells.

The analysis of the state of stress and deformations was carried out using the special model worked out in MES considering the combination of loads, the thermal ones included. For the long lasting loads (the deadweight of the dome), the computed results of static quantities were confronted with analytical results obtained according to F. Dischinger’s method. This method had been applied by the DYWIDAG Company in Berlin and its branch in Katowice (Poland) who designed the Gdynia Dome.

The computational analysis and the assessment of the technical state, along with laboratory pH tests of concrete, made it possible to carry out the overall evaluation of durability and safety of operation of the Gdynia Seaport Dome through the next decades.

A continuous contact layer exists between the top and bottom layer of concrete composite reinforced floors. The contact layer is characterised by linear elasticity and frictional properties. In this paper a model of single degree of freedom of composite floor is determined. The model assumes that the restoring forces and the non-conservative internal friction forces dissipating energy are produced within the contact layer. A hysteresis loop is created in the process of static loading and unloading of the model, with the energy absorption coefficient being defined on this basis. The value of the coefficient is rising along with the growing stiffness of the composite.

A critical damping ratio is a parameter describing free decaying vibration caused by non-conservative internal friction forces in the contact layer and in the bottom and top layer. The value of the ratio in the defined model is rising along with the lowering stiffness of the element representing contact layer.

The findings resulting from the theoretical analyses carried out, including the experimental tests, are the basis for the established methods of determining the concrete layer state for reinforced concrete floors. The method is based on energy dissipation in the contact layer.