REINFORCED CONCRETE ELEMENT II

INTRODUCTION TO PRESTRESSED CONCRETE

Pre-stressed Materials
M LUTFI MANFALUTHY

OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of this topic, student will be able to:
Distinguish the differences between reinforcing steel and prestressing steel.
Distinguish the shapes of pre-stressing tendons.
Recognize mostly used stand types.
Understand the effect of relaxation, temperature, fatigue, an corrosion
to pre-stressing steel.
Understand the composition of concrete used in pre-stressed
concrete.
Recognize stress-strain diagram of concrete.
Understand the most useful mechanical properties of concrete (fc,
ftc, fr, Ec, n)
Understand the effect of creep, Shrinkage, fatigue, temperature,
and steam curing to pre-stressed concrete.

INTRODUCTION
Prestressed concrete utilizes high-quality materials, namely high strength
steel and concrete. In addition, ordinary reinforcing steel is extensively
used in partially prestressed concrete and in application in seismic
zones.
The composition, properties, and manufacturing concrete and steel are
extensively described in literatures. Here will be brief over view of their
most important characteristics as needed in most common design
situation.

PRE-STRESSING MATERIALS
Material used in pre-stressed concrete are:
Pre-stressing steel
Concrete
Auxiliary
Anchorage
Tendon ducting
Cement grout

PRESTRESSING STEEL
As prestressed looses in the steel (not include friction) can often
approach 400MPa, that is about equal to the typical yield
strength of of common reinforcing bars, it is clear that minimum
tensile strength of prestressed steel must be higer than this
value.
Ideally a tendon material should not only have high strength but
also:
remain elastic upto relatively high stress
show sufficient ductility before failure
have good bonding properties, low relaxation, good
resistance to
fatigue and corrosion
be economical and easy to handle

Type of pre-stressing tendons*

Courtesy of Sumitomos Tensioning Materials, Japan

Type of pre-stressing tendons*

Mechanical and Stress-Strain properties

Minimum Properties of pre-stressing tendon.

Stress-strain diagram of pre-stresseing steel

From figure, prestressing
steel:
Offer substantially higher
strength than reinforcing
steel accompanied by
lower failure strain.
Do not show well defined
yielding behavior.
Have relatively high
proportional limits.

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Steel Relaxation

Relaxation is the loss of tension over time in a stressed tendon maintained at

constant length and temperature. The relaxation is negligible for stress smaller
than 50 percent of ultimate strength. Temperature increase also caused significant
effect on loss of stress in prestressing steel.
(ITS Surabaya) Reinforced Concrete II

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Fatigue of Pre-stressing Steel

Fatigue is the process of deterioration of the mechanical
properties of materials under fluctuating stresses. The
resistance of material to fatigue is often described by an S-N
curve, where S represent the stress range in the material
and N the number of cycles to failure, also called fatigue
life.
An endurance limit (That is the stress range for which the
reinforcement will not fail for an infinite number of cycles) has
not been found for prestressing steels; however the fatigue
life of 2 million cycles is considered sufficient for most
applications.
ACI committee 215, suggest that maximum stress range of
0.1fpu for prestressing strands and 0.12fpu for wire.

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S N Curve and Smith Diagram

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CORROSION
The magnitude and consequences of corrosion in prestressing
steel are mush more severe than in reinforcing steel. This is not
only high-grade steel is more susceptible to corrosion but also
because the diameter of prestressing tendon is relatively small.
Thus even small corroded spot substantially reduce the crosssectional area of steel.
Prestessing steel are generally susceptible to two major types of
corrosion:
Electro chemical corrosion.
an aqueous solution must be present, even in the form of thin
film, and air (oxygen) is needed.
Stress corrosion
causes brittleness in the steel under certain conditions of stress
and environment.
To guard against corrosion, prestressing steel must be transported
and stored in closed waterproof container.

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CONCRETE
Concrete is a versatile composite material of a very complex nature, yet
it can be approached at any desired level of sophistication.
The technical level at which concrete must be approach is higher in
prestressed concrete than in reinforced concrete. In designing
prestressed concrete, the designer does not only consider the strength
of concrete but also its time-dependent properties such as creep and
shrinkage.
(

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CONCRETE STRESS STRAIN CURVE

Left figure shows stress strain diagram
of concrete, first part is ascending
portion up to the peak point (maximum
stress) and descending portion, the
strength, f'c , corresponds to the
maximum stress.
It can be observed that the higher the
concrete strength, the steeper the
descending portion of the stress-strain
curve. A steep descending portion is
often associated with brittleness or lack
of ductility of material.

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Determination of Modulus from Stress-Strain Diagram

From stress-strain diagram SNI/ACI use elasticity (Ec) value taken the
tangent of line from origin to point 0.45fc
(ITS Surabaya) Reinforced Concrete II

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ELASTICITY FROM SEVERAL CODES

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CONCRETE SHRINKAGE
Concrete contained more
water
than
is
strictly
required
by
chemical
reaction of cement. The
excess water called free
water, its loss through
evaporation
leads
to
gradual
shortening
of
member
with
time,
described as shrinkage.
As the member shortens,
the prestressing steel loses
part of its prestress, this is
called shrinkage loss.

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CONCRETE CREEP
Creep is time dependent strain in
excess of elastic strain induced in
material subjected to a sustained
stress.
Unlike shrinkage, creep is caused
by loading. If the load is removed,
the initial elastic strain is recovered
immediately. A part of the creep
strain is gradually recovered over
time and remaining part is nonrecoverable.
Effect of age at loading is
represented on left figure. One to
noted that earlier the prestressing
load,
higher
the
loss
of
prestressing.

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DISPLACEMENT CAUSED BY CREEP

As pointed out earlier, the
creep of concrete leads not
only losses of stress in the
prestressing steel, but also
to long term deformation or
deflection of the structure.
This illustrated in left figure.
Note that the deflection
curve for constant load is
very similar in shape to the
curve of creep strain under
constant load.
For actual condition in the
field
where
continuous
variation in temperature and
humidity,
will
lead
to
fluctuating curves with much
less defined limiting values.

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CONCRETE FATIGUE
It is generally observed that concrete in direct compression can
sustain a fluctuating stress between o to 50 percent of its static
compressive strength for at least 10 million cycles. Thus failure
of concrete by compression fatigue is rare.
For design purposes ACI committee 215 on fatigue suggest
limiting the concrete stress to:

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EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE ON CONCRETE

Concrete heated up to 200C does not undergo significant
physical or chemical changes. It generally loses its free water
at 100oC and, except some micro cracking, maintains most of
its mechanical characteristic.
The strength properties of concrete generally increase with a
substantial drop in temperature. However this improvement
depends on the water content of the concrete and is much
higher for moist concrete than for dry concrete. Compressive
strength increases more than 200 percent have been
observed for initially moist-cured concretes later tested at
-15oC.
The coefficient of thermal expansion of concrete depends on
many factors, including mix proportions and the type of
aggregate. An average of 10 to 12 x 10-6 per degree Celsius
for normal weight concrete and 7 to 11 x 10-6 per degree
Celsius for light weight concrete.

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REMARKS
The material properties summarized here are essential
elements to the full understanding of restressed concrete
behavior. They help to clarify the basic for many design
procedures treated later.
Not all the properties are of immediate use in design.
However, the more final the design, and the more complex
the structure, the greater is the need to account in design for
the actual behavior of the materials and their interaction.
Prestress losses depend not only on material properties but
also on structural behavior and environmental condition. At
this point, their immediate and thorough treatment may
confuse who newly acquainted with prestressed concrete.

Reinforced Concrete Element II

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