Abstract
The art and practice of prestressing concrete structures has stirred the imagination of civil engineers during the past 30 years. This challenge will continue and the future outlook for prestressed concrete promises even greater interest and excitement. Freyssinet's imaginative idea, to use high strength steel wire with more than 4000 kg/cm2 (56,000 psi) allowable prestress, led to great success and progress in prestressed concrete construction. His first publication on prestressed concrete was titled Une Revolution dans l'Art de Batir (A Revolution in the Art of Building). Indeed; a revolution was started which opened large new fields of application of concrete as a construction material. The prestressing revolution began with a period of creativity mainly by European engineers, inventing different prestressing systems, developing special prestressing steels and providing larger and larger tendons allowing forces up to 1000 tons (2200 kips) or concentrated tendons with prestressing forces of more than 10,000 tons (22,000 kips). Special hydraulic jacks and other special equipment for stressing, anchoring, coupling, and grouting of tendons were invented. Practical experience, systematic research, and special design theories combined to provide a reliable body of knowledge of the behavior and the load carrying capacity of prestressed concrete structures. Principles and recommendations for design could be established, and the joint effort of FIP and CEB (Comite Europeen du Beton) produced a universal code to guide the design of thousands of prestressed concrete structures throughout the world. This revolutionary period is essentially ended, the pace of new inventions in the field has slowed, and we are now entering a period of optimization, that is, selecting the technically and economically best systems and methods, free from patent prestige or other nonrational criteria. A variety of systems will still remain because their unique technical properties and advantages are needed for different applications.
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