Camber calculation of prestressed concrete I-Girder considering geometric nonlinearity

Abstract

Prestressed concrete I-girders are subject to different load types at their construction stages. At the time of strand release, i.e., detensioning, prestressed concrete girders are under the effect of dead and prestressing loads. At this stage, the camber, total net upward deflection, of prestressed girder is summation of the upward deflection due to the prestressing force and the downward deflection due to dead loads. For the calculation of the upward deflection, it is generally considered that prestressed concrete I-girder behaves linear-elastic. However, the field measurements on total net upward deflection of prestressed I-girder after detensioning show contradictory results. In this paper, camber calculations with the linear-elastic beam and elastic-stability theories are presented. One of a typical precast I-girder with 120 cm height and 31.5 m effective span length is selected as a case study. 3D finite element model (FEM) of the girder is developed by SAP2000 software, and the deflections of girder are obtained from linear and nonlinear-static analyses. Only geometric nonlinearity is taken into account. The material test and field measurement of this study are performed at prestressing girder plant. The results of the linear-elastic beam and elastic-stability theories are compared with FEM results and field measurements. It is seen that the camber predicted by elastic-stability theory gives acceptable results than the linear-elastic beam theory while strand releasing.