Prestressing Effects on Full Scale Deep Beams with Large Web Openings¨: An Experimental and Numerical Study

Most studies on deep beams have been made with reinforced concrete deep beams, only a few studies investigate the response of prestressed deep beams, while, to the best of our knowledge, there is not a study that investigates the response of full scale (T-section) prestressed deep beams with large web openings. An experimental and numerical study was conducted in order to investigate the shear strength of ordinary reinforced and partially prestressed full scale (T-section) deep beams that contain large web openings in order to investigate the prestressing existence effects on the deep beam responses and to better understand the effects of prestressing locations and opening depth to beam depth ratio on the deep beam performance and behavior. A total of seven deep beam specimens with identical shear span-to-depth ratio, compressive strength of concrete, and amount of horizontal and vertical web reinforcement ratios have been tested under mid-span concentrated load applied monotonically until failure. The main variables studied were the effects of depth of the web openings and the prestressing location on deep beam performance. The test results showed that the enlargement in the size of web openings substantially reduces the element’s shear capacities while prestressing strands location above the web openings has more effect at increasing the element’s shear capacities. The numerical study considered three-dimensional finite element models that have been developed in Abaqus software to simulate and predict the performance of prestressed deep beams. The results of numerical simulations were in good agreement with the experimental ones.