Abstract
Fatigue failure is a phenomenon such that structures under cyclic service load is failed by sudden brittle manner. Therefore, in order to obtain structures safety against the fatigue failure during their service lifes, fatigue characteristics should be considered for design and analysis of the structures. As stress range of prestressed (PS) tendons, which governs fatigus characteristic of prestressed concrete (PSC) structures, increases with increased use of partial prestressig, it is more necessary to consider fatigue characteristics of PS tendons. In this paper, direct-tension fatigue experiments with special specimen-setting devices are carried out to obtain fatigue characteristics of domestic low relaxation PS strands having different diameters and PS strands connected with coupler. Then, allowable stress range of fatigue for PSC beams using low relaxation strands are presented for the fatigue examination of prestressed concrete beams applied cyclic loading.
