Shear Tests on Prestressed Concrete Continuous Beams

摘要

Due to increased traffic loads and changes in the code provisions many highway bridges in Germany exhibit deficits in shear capacity according to current codes. The majority of these bridges' structures comprises continuous concrete beams whose calculatory shear capacity is often exceeded by now. However, the actual shear capacity of prestressed concrete continuous beams is usually underestimated since the design procedures have been derived on the basis of single span beam tests and neglect significant shear transfer mechanisms. In order to extend the service life of existing bridges, the reserves in the design procedures can be partially taken advantage of by the application of refined design approaches. For this reason, five shear tests on prestressed concrete continuous beams have been performed at the Institute of Structural Concrete of RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Within these tests, the influence of cross-section type (rectangular and I-shaped cross-section), load distribution (concentrated and distributed loads) and the shear reinforcement ratio is investigated. In this paper, the test results of three beams under concentrated loads will be presented.