Flexural failure experiment on cracked PC simply supported box girders

Abstract

Long-term load and flexural failure experiments are carried out on two prestressed concrete (PC) simply supported box girders. In the long-term load experiment, girder-1 (G1) is in an elastic state, while girder-2 (G2) is in a cracking state. To investigate the influence of cracking on the flexural behaviors of PC simply supported box beams, the experiment results are analyzed from many aspects, such as load–deflection, load–strain, and failure mode. Experiment results show the following: 1) the shrinkage and creep of concrete have considerable influences on the long-term deflection and strain of the two girders; 2) in the flexural failure experiment, the cracks and ultimate loads of the two girders are close. The rigidity degeneration of G2 is significantly faster than that of G1, and thus G2 shows nonlinear characteristics earlier; 3) to prove the validity and rationality of the current code, the cracking load and ultimate load of the two girders are calculated according to the current code.

Keywords

PC box girders / long-term load experiment / flexural behaviors / cracks / static performance

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