BEARING CAPACITY OF T BEAM UNDER DIFFERENT PRESTRESS LEVELS: FULL-SCALE EXPERIMENT AND FEM ANALYSIS

Abstract

Insufficient prestress will cause cracks in the T beam, which will influence its stiffness and bearing capacity. This paper is devoted to studying the influence of prestress levels on the bearing capacity of T beam, and then judging its working state. A full-scale model experiment is carried out on the 13 meters prestressed concrete T beam. At the same time, a nonlinear finite element model is established and verified. The experimental results show the numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, the finite element model is used to make a simulation of the bearing capacity of T beams under different prestress levels. The mathematical relationship between prestress levels and bearing capacity is obtained based on the results of the finite element model. The relationships between the mid-span deflection and load of the experimental beam are basically the same under different prestress levels, both including three stages: elastic stage, crack development stage and failure stage. With the increase of the prestress levels, the stiffness of the experimental beam before cracking is improved significantly.