Abstract
Recently, the external prestressed concrete structures are increasingly being built. The mechanical behavior of prestressed concrete beams with unbonded tendon is different from that of normal bonded PSC beams in that the increment of tendon stress was derived by whole member behavior. By this reason, the ultimate stress of external tendon is smaller than that of bonded tendon or internal unbonded tendon. However, in the domestic and abroad code, the equation of ultimate stress of external tendon is not suggested yet, and the equation of ultimate stress of internal unbonded tendon is used instead of that of external tendon. Therefore, in this paper, after effective variables of ultimate stress of external tendon were analyzed, the analytical equation of ultimate stress of external tendon was proposed. And the reasonable coefficients were proposed by statistical work of test results of 25 beam with external tendon. Finally, the practical proposed equation of ultimate stress of external tendon was proposed with analytical and statistical model. The equation of ACI-318 and AASHTO 1994 were not matched with test results and had no correlations, and the proposed equation was well matched with test results. So the proposed equation in this paper will be a effective basis for the evaluation of external tendons in analysis and design.