Serviceability Performance of Externally Prestressed Steel-Concrete Composite Girders

The behavior of externally prestressed composite beams under short term loading has been studied. A computer program developed originally by Oukaili to evaluate curvature is modified to evaluate the deflection of prestressed composite beam under flexural load. The analysis model based on the deformation compatibility of entire structure that allows to determine the full history of strain and stress distribution along cross section depth, deflection and stress increment in the external tendons . The evaluation of curvatures for the composite beam involves iterations for computing the strains vectors at each node at any loading stage. The stress increment determined using equations depended on the member deflection at points of connection. The stress increment determined using equations depended on the member deflection at points of connection. The proposed model results for load –deflection response are compared with experimental data taken from Auyyb's beams. For beams with straight tendon profile the average discrepancy reached 5.77%, 8.48% and 5.23% corresponding to the 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 of the maximum load, respectively. For beams with the draped tendon profile, the average discrepancy of the analytical deflections values reached 15.5%, 5.8% and 6.45% corresponding to the 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 of maximum load, respectively

Effect of Size and Location of Square Web Openings on the Entire Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Deep Beams

This paper presents an experimental and numerical study which was carried out to examine the influence of the size and the layout of the web openings on the load carrying capacity and the serviceability of reinforced concrete deep beams. Five full-scale simply supported reinforced concrete deep beams with two large web openings created in shear regions were tested up to failure. The shear span to overall depth ratio was (1.1). Square openings were located symmetrically relative to the midspan section either at the midpoint or at the interior boundaries of the shear span. Two different side dimensions for the square openings were considered, mainly, (200) mm and (230) mm. The strength results proved that the shear capacity of the deep beam is governed by the size and location of web openings. The experimental results indicated that the reduction of the shear capacity may reach (66%). ABAQUS finite element software program was used for simulation and analysis. Numerical analyses provided un-conservative estimates for deep beam load carrying capacity in the range between (5-21%). However, the maximum scatter of the finite element method predictions for first diagonal and first flexural cracking loads was not exceeding (17%). Also, at service load the numerical of midspan deflection was greater than the experimental values by (9-18%)