• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.9 no.4 s.33
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• pp.697-705
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• 1997

The conventional preflex beams are designed by the method of paritial prestressing and allow the tensile stresses at the lower concrete of beams. As a consequence, most of preflex beams experience the tensile cracks under the service loads. This study was conducted to develop the most effective preflex beams, which do not allow tensile stress under the service load, by introducing additional prestressing called 'represtressing' at the lower concrete of beams. The objective of the study was accomplished by developing a computer analysis and design program and conducting experiments. Using the developed computer program, standard sections of the represtressed preflex beams were determined by computer modeling. In the experiment, two actual size of represtressed beams were tested under the imitated service loads. The results of test have shown that the performance of the represtressed preflex beams is generally excellent. A remarkable improvement was made in the design of preflex composite beams. Since the represtressed preflex beams(RPF) do not experience the tensile cracks under the service loads, the use of this beam for the bridge structures will lead to easy bridge maintenance and management. Furthermore, due to the low beam depth, high clearance and economical design can be realized in the bridge design using RPF.