High-cycle fatigue tests of pretensioned concrete beams

Abstract

Pretensioned concrete beams are widely used as bridge girders for simply supported bridges. Understanding the fatigue behavior of such beams is very important for design and construction to prevent fatigue failure. The fatigue behavior of pretensioned concrete beams is mainly influenced by the fatigue of the prestressing strands. The evaluation of previous test results from the literature indicated a reduced fatigue life in the long-life region compared with current design methods and specifications. Therefore, nine additional high-cycle fatigue tests were conducted on pretensioned concrete beams with strand stress ranges of about 100 MPa (14.5 ksi). The test results confirmed that current design methods and specifications overestimate the fatigue life of embedded strands in pretensioned concrete beams.