Time-Dependent Prestress Losses in Prestressed Concrete Girders Built of High-Performance Concrete

The Washington State Department of Transportation is one of several state departments of transportation involved in demonstration projects to acquire information and data on the design, fabrication, and construction of prestressed concrete bridges with high-performance concrete (HPC). Predicting the time-dependent prestress losses due to the creep and shrinkage of HPC and the relaxation of prestressing steel is difficult because of the limited experience with and data on the creep and shrinkage properties of HPC. The AASHTO load resistance factor design specification approach to estimating prestress losses is discussed, and the time-step method and the modified rate-of-creep method are introduced as ways of predicting more accurately the time-dependent prestress losses. A design example is used to compare and discuss numerically the prestress losses computed by the various methods. The modified rate-of-creep analysis method yields the lowest losses. The modified rate-of-creep method is a desirable, comprehensive, applicable, and practical method for estimating time-dependent prestress losses in composite and noncomposite prestressed concrete girders with HPC. This method is suitable for manual and electronic computation.