Martin Claßen

Experimental Investigations on the Shear Capacity of Prestressed Concrete Continuous Beams with Rectangular and I-Shaped Cross-Sections

Due to increased traffic loads and changes in the code provisions many bridges in Germany exhibit shear capacity deficits according to current codes. However, the shear capacity of prestressed concrete continuous beams might be underestimated according to recent test results. Also, the design procedures have usually been verified on the basis of single span beam tests so that additional tests on continuous beams seem appropriate. In order to extent the service life of existing bridges, the epistemic safety margins in the design procedures can in part be used by application of refined design approaches. For this reason, five shear tests on prestressed concrete continuous beams are performed at the Institute of Structural Concrete of RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Within these tests, the influence of the cross-section type (rectangular and I-shaped cross-section), the load distribution (concentrated and distributed loads) and the shear reinforcement ratio is investigated. In this paper, the preliminary test results of two beams under concentrated loads will be presented.