Comparative Study Related to Failure Force and Failure Mechanism Between Real Life Test and 3-D FEM Model on a Highway Beam

摘要

This document aims to presents the comparison in terms of failure force and failure mechanism between a real life experiment conducted in 2008 on a highway prestressed and precasted box beam subjected to concentrated loads and loaded until failure in 6 load cicles and a 3-D finite element model prestressed, loaded and constrained in the exact same manner. The reason for a 3-D finite element model was to a better observing of the behavior of stress, strain and crack distribution in the beam and to calibrate the model in order to make a parametric study in the future, varying different aspects: load application, section thickness, prestress, etc. The results of this study may provide important informations, considering that our country has a huge potential for implementation of prestressed box girders due to the urgent need to achieve a modern and adequate transport infrastructure. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated as follows by comparison with experimental results obtained by INCERC. This paper deals with the largest destructive test, ever performed in Romania on a prefabricated bridge box girder.