Abstract Prestressed concrete (PC) is the predominant material in highway bridge construction. The use of high-strength concrete has gained wide acceptance in the PC industry. The main target in the highway industry is to increase the durability and the life-span of bridges. Cracking of elements is one aspect which affects durability. Recently, nine 7.62 meter long PC I-beams made with different concrete strength were designed according to a simple, semi-empirical equation developed at the University of Houston (UH) (Laskar et al., ACI Journal 107(3): 330–339, 2010). The UH Method is a function of shear span-to-depth ratio ( a / d ), concrete strength $$ sqrt {{f}_{c}' } $$ , web area $$ b_{w} d $$ , and amount of transverse steel. Based on testing these girders, the shear cracking strength of girders with different concrete strength and different shear span-to-depth ratio was investigated and compared to the available approaches in current codes such as ACI 318-11 (2011) and AASHTO LRFD Specifications (2010).
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