HW 1:

1. History of Prestressing
 1872 – P.H. Jackson, a Californian engineer, patented a prestressing system
that used a tie rod to construct beams or arches from individual blocks.
 1888 – C.W. Doehring of Germany obtained a patent for prestressing slabs
with metal wires with metal wire but were not really successful because of
the loss of the prestress with time.
 R E. Dill of Aleandria Nebraska, recognized the effect of the shrinkage and
creep (transverse of material flow) of concrete on the loss of prestress.
Successive post-tensioning of unbonded rods would compensate for the
time-dependent loss of stress in the rods due to decrease in the length of
the member because of creep and shrinkage.
 Early 1920s – W.H. Hewett of Minneapolis developed the principles of
circular prestressing. He hoop-stressed horizontal reinforcement around
walls of concrete tanks through the use of turnbuckles to prevent cracking
due to internal liquid pressure achieving watertighteness.
 1926 to 1928 – Eugene Freyssinet proposed methods to overcome
prestress losses through the use of high-strength and high-ductility steels.
In 1940, he introduced to now well-known and well-accepted Freyssinet
system compromising the conical wedge anchor for 12-wire tendons.
 WWII and thereafter - G. Magnel of Ghent, Belgium and Y. Guyon of Paris
extensively developed and used the concept of prestressing for the design
and construction of bridges in western and central Europe. The Magnel
system also used wedges to anchor the prestressing wires.
  1930s to 1960s – P.W. Abeles of England introduced and developed the
concept of partial prestressing.
 T.Y. Lin of United States developed load-balancing method which simplified
the design process particularly in continuous structures.
 Today, prestressed concrete is used in buildings, underground structures,
TV towers, floating storage and offshore structures, power stations, nuclear
reactor vessels and numerous types of bridges including segmental and
cable-stayed bridges.

2. Concepts of Prestressing
a. Basic Concept
 The concrete fiber stresses are DIRECTLY computed from the external
forces applied to the concrete by longitudinal prestressing and the
external transverse load.
(insert formulas)
b. Load Balancing
 This echnique is based on utilizing the vertical force of the draped or
harped prestressing tendon to counteract or balance the imposed
gravity loading to which a beam is subjected. Hence, it is applicable
to nonstraight prestressing tendon.
 (insert formulas)
c. C-Line
  In this line-of-pressure or thrust concept, the beam is analyzed as if it
were a plain concrete elastic beam using basic principles of statics.
(C-line or center-of-pressure line)
 The prestressing force is considered an external compressive force,
with a constant tensile force T in the tendon throughout the span
thus, effect of external gravity loads are disregarded.
 (insert formulas)

3. Methods of Prestressing
a. Pretensioning
 In pretensioning the prestressing tendons (wires, strands) are
stretched to a predetermined tension and anchored to fixed
bulkhead or molds.
 The concrete is poured around the tendons, cured and upon
hardening the tendons are released.
 As the bond between tendons and the concrete resists the
shortening of the tendons, the concrete is compressed.
 The prefix “pre” in pretensioning refers to the fact that the tendons
are put in tension prior or before to hardening of concrete.
b. Posttenioning
 In posttensioning, the tendons are stressed and anchored at the
ends of the concrete members after the member has been cast and
attained its sufficient strength.
  A mortar-tight metal pipe or duct (also called sheath) is placed along
the member before concrete casting. The tendons could be
preplaced loose inside the sheath prior to casting or could be placed
after hardening of the concrete then void is filled with mortar grout.
 The tendons generally used in posttensioning are made out of wires,
strands or bars. Bars are tensioned at one time, wires and strands
can be tensioned singly or in groups.
c. Sef-Stressing
 Used to minimize labor cost
i. Electrical or electrothermal prestressing – considered
pretensioning as well.
ii. Expansive cement prestressing – maxtrix is responsible for
activating self-stressing.
iii. Special prestressing materials – using of shape memory alloys
(SMAs) for reinforcement.

4. Differentiate Post-tensioning from Pre-tensioning

 In pre-tensioning the stressing wires or tendons are stressed prior to
placing concrete while in post-tensioning, the tendons are stressed after
the concrete has been place or cast and has attained sufficient strength to
safely withstand prestressing force.