In the application of prestress, the usual procedure is to tension high-strength-steel elements, called tendons, and anchor them to the concrete, which resists the tendency of the stretched steel to shorten after anchorage and is thus compressed. If the tendons are tensioned before concrete has been placed, the prestressing is called pretensioning. If the tendons are tensioned after the concrete has been placed the prestressing is called posttensioning.
Prestress can prevent cracking by keeping tensile stresses small, or entirely avoiding tension under service loads. The entire concrete cross-section behaves as an uncracked homogeneous material in bending. In contrast, in nonprestressed, reinforced-concrete construction, tensile stresses are resisted by reinforcing steel, and concrete in tension is considered ineffective. It is particularly advantageous with prestressed concrete to use high-strength concrete.
Loss of Prestress. The final compression force in the concrete is not equal to the initial tension force applied by the tendons. There are immediate losses due to elastic shortening of the concrete, friction losses from curvature of the tendons, and slip at anchorages. There are also long-time losses, such as those due to shrinkage and creep of the concrete, and possibly relaxation of the prestressing steel. These losses should be computed as accurately as possible or determined experimentally.
They are deducted from the initial prestressing force to determine the effective prestressing force to be used in design. (The reason that high-strength steels must be used for prestressing is to maintain the sum of these strain losses at a small percentage of the initially applied prestressing strain.) (See also Art. 9.107.)
Stresses. When stresses in prestressed members are determined, prestressing forces can be treated as other external loads. If the prestress is large enough to prevent cracking under design loads, elastic theory can be applied to the entire concrete cross section (Fig. 9.61).
Prestress may be applied to a beam by straight tendons or curved tendons.
Stresses at midspan can be the same for both types of tendons, but the net stresses with the curved tendons can remain compressive away from midspan, whereas they become tensile at the top fiber near the ends with straight tendons. For a prestressing force Ps applied to a beam by a straight tendon at a distance e1 below the neutral axis, the resulting prestress in the extreme surface throughout is
where Ps /Ac is the compressive stress on a cross section of area Ac, and Pse1c/ Ig is the bending stress induced by Ps (positive for compression and negative for tension), as indicated in Fig. 9.61. If stresses +- Mc/ Ig due to moment M caused by external gravity loads are superimposed at midspan, the net stresses in the extreme fibers can become zero at the bottom and compressive at the top. Because the stresses due to gravity loads are zero at the beam ends, the prestress is the final stress there and the top surface of the beam at the ends is in tension.
If the tensile stresses at the ends of beams with straight tendons are excessive, the tendons may be draped, or harped, in a vertical curve. Stresses at midspan will be substantially the same as with straight tendons (if the horizontal component of prestress is nearly equal to Ps) and the stresses at the beam ends will be compressive, because the prestressing force passes through or above the centroid of the end sections (Fig. 9.61). Between midspan and the ends, the cross sections will also be in compression.
