Non-linear analysis of prestressed concrete T-beams

摘要

In the Netherlands many concrete bridges that were built in the sixties and seventies are still in service. One subset of these bridges consists of prestressed concrete T-beams with cast-in-between slabs, cross-beams and transverse prestressing. Upon (re)assessment, the strength of these bridges is often too low. To investigate the ultimate load capacity, a T-beam bridge from 1962 was tested in seven full size collapse tests. In four tests the deck was sawn in longitudinal direction so that it became possible to test the load capacity of the individual beams. The individual beam tests are analyzed using a 3D non-linear finite element model. In the experiments, the load was placed at two different positions from the support. It was found that the non-linear analysis shows good agreement with the load placed at 2.25 m from the support. However, with the load at 4.00 m from the support, the non-linear analysis shows an overestimation of ~15 %.