Experimental Investigations on Prestressed Concrete Beams with Openings: Fid-Bau Portal

Experimental Investigations on Prestressed Concrete Beams with Openings

Martin Classen

Due to the needs of sustainability, there are efforts to develop innovative integrated floor slabs that feature wide spans, and enable a variable arrangement of building services in the construction height to allow for buildings with adaptive floor layouts and high flexibility of use. These integrated floor slab concepts usually require large web openings in the structural bending elements. The influence of openings on the load-bearing capacity and deformation behavior of double-T-shaped concrete beams with prestressed tension chord was investigated within six beam tests. The main test parameters were concrete strength, amount of vertical reinforcement at the edges of the opening, and location of the opening in the longitudinal direction. Proper arrangement and dimensioning of reinforcement, the load-carrying capacity of concrete beams with openings can attain approximately the same load-carrying capacity as concrete beams without openings. At ultimate limit state, the global shear force of beams with openings is mainly carried by the compression chord.