ABSTRACT

A methodology for evaluating the response of shear critical prestressed concrete members subjected to combined bending and shear stresses has been presented in this paper. The proposed methodology is based on the Softened Membrane Model for Prestressed Concrete (SMM-PC). SMM-PC is based on Navier’s principle of mechanics and considers the effect of prestressing on the softening of concrete as well as the Poisson’s effect in cracked concrete. The proposed analysis methodology has been verified by comparing the predicted shear capacities obtained using the proposed method with the failure loads of tested shear critical PC beams having various amount of longitudinal and transverse steel, shear span-to-depth ratios, available in the literature. The results indicate that the proposed methodology is conservative and estimates the shear strength of shear critical PC beams with reasonable accuracy.