Prestressed Concrete
Developments in Japan
Ben C. Gerwick, Jr.
Professor of Civil Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
D uring September 1978, I had the
opportunity to visit Japan and to
observe at close range recent Japanese
developments in prestressed concrete.
reviewed on-going research and de-
velopment, inspected several outstand-
ing projects and had the opportunity to
meet with many knowledgeable
Japanese engineers, educators and FIP
officials.
The overall impression I got was that
prestressed concrete technology in
Japan is already at a very high level
(and still advancing) and that the mater-
ial is being used innovatively in many di-
verse types of applications. Indeed,
there is much we can learn from the
Japanese with regard to many aspects
of prestressed concrete.
Summarized below are my impres-
sions of Japanese developments in pre-
stressed and precast concrete especially
as applied to high strength concrete,
highway and railroad bridges, rail ties,
tunnel liners, airport pavements,
hollow-core slabs, unbonded tendons,
66
storage tanks, noise barriers, piles,
segmental construction, earthquake en-
gineering, sea structures and other ap-
plications.
As others have previously reported, I,
too, am impressed by the emphasis
within the construction industry on new
technology. Research is quickly trans-
formed into field application through the
process of negotiated contracts and
government support. There appears to
be extremely close cooperation between
government, industry, and the univer-
sities, although some educators feel that
too much research is being channelled
to industry, thereby reducing the amount
allotted to the universities.
All major contractors conduct inten-
sive research and development pro-
grams. When R & D has reached a suf-
ficient level of development, it is applied
on small and moderate sized projects in
order to evaluate construction tech-
niques and performance.
One good example of this is the de-
velopment and application of high
strength concrete [80 to 100 MPa
(11,600 to 14,500 psi) l using various
admixtures and curing methods. A
promising new admixture has been
found which develops such high
strengths at a very early age, using only
atmospheric steam curing in a normal
manner. To provide compressive ductil-
ity, spiral confinement is applied at a rel-
atively close spacing, using high yield
strength steel, up to and including the
use of unstressed cold-bent prestressing
Fig. 1. Layout of tendons and mild reinforcing steel prior to concreting prestressed
airport pavement (designed for DC-8).
PCI JOURNAL/November-December 1978
bar steels of 1300 MPa (190 ksi) yield
strength.
Using this technique the longitudinal
prestress must be properly proportioned.
A precompressive stress in the concrete
(after losses) of 20 MPa (2900 psi) is
used.
Another interesting example is a main
line railway bridge of moderate span [80
m (260 ft) l which has been selected for
field application tests. This bridge, now
70 percent complete, uses a Warren
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Fig. 2. Completed prestressed concrete airport pavement (designed for DC-8).

Fig. 3. Prestressed concrete truss railway bridge. Note that the design strength of
the elements is about 12,000 psi (83 MPa). Segments are match-cast in plant using
a new admixture (Sigma 1000) and low pressure steam curing. They are joined by
post-tensioning. [Iwahana Bridge (first PC truss bridge in Japan)].

68
0

Erection sequence
0 ' 1. Set lower chords and lower panel points
with resin joints. First tensioning.
2. Set floor beams and place concrete at
joints. Second tensioning at lower chords.
3. Set floor slabs and place concrete at

4. Assemble temporary diagonals in a

triangle and transport by mobile gantry.
Set upper panel points and smear binding
agent at each joint. Apply tension to diag-
onals.
5. Set upper lateral struts on the erection jig
and place concrete at joints. Set upper
8 chords and place concrete at joints.
Fig. 4. Prestressed concrete truss railway bridge. The design strength of elements
is about 12,000 psi (83 MPa). Segments are match-cast in plant using new admix-
ture (Sigma 1000) and low pressure steam curing. They are joined by post-
tensioning. Shown below is an elevation and plan of the bridge.

70
Fig. 5. Reception at Tokyo University after lecture. [FIP Vice President (Japan) Dr.
Inomata is in background to right. )

truss, built of match-cast precast seg-
ments, post-tensioned through the joints.
Prestressed concrete is being used
increasingly for both highway and rail-
way bridges, spurred on by the signifi-
cant reduction in noise level in adjoining
urban areas and by the reduced elastic
deformations as compared with steel.
Precast concrete noise barriers are
being installed on most bridges.
Precast concrete tunnel liners are now
standard for all tunnels, including those
bored through water-bearing sediments.
Sealing strips are embodied in the con-
tact edges and actually "knit" under
pressure from adjoining liner segments.
Prestressed concrete railway slabs
are now being used on some of the
newer high speed rail lines. These are
installed on top of a cast-in-place con-

Fig. 6. Ohnaruto Bridge, whose piers are now nearing completion will span a
treacherous strait with swirling tidal rips and whirlpools. This structure is one of
many long-span bridges that will form part of the Honshu-Shikoku Crossing.

PCI JOURNAL/November-December 1978 71

Fig. 7 (top and bottom). Precast tunnel liners are extensively used in Japanese
tunnelling, even in water-bearing sands and silts under Tokyo harbor. Note the
plastic (gum) water seal that knits with its neighbor when pressure is applied. This
is a major field for accurate precasters producing close-tolerance high strength
concrete components.

crete pavement, and held to correct Precast concrete breakwater armor

grade and alignment by grouting. Al-
though more expensive in first cost than
the conventional prestressed concrete
railway sleepers, they are expected to
significantly reduce track maintenance
cost.
units of many different designs are being
extensively employed in both small and
large harbor construction projects. Some
of these are conventional breakwaters,
others are semi-porous. The largest har-
bor project is at Tomokomai, in Hok-

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Fig. 8. Enroute to Tomokomai East Harbor where several hundred thousand precast
concrete armor units such as tetrapods will form one of the largest deep water
breakwaters in the world.
kaido, where 2300-ton precast concrete
caissons are used as the structural core
of the breakwater.
While in Japan, I received informal re-
ports on the performance of different
types of buildings during the 1978 Sen-
dai earthquake, northeast of Tokyo. Ap-
parently, many reinforced concrete
buildings suffered severe damage due to
poor concreting practices (segregation
and honeycombing due to poor pumping
practices) and also due to their reso-
nance after cracking with a high-energy
portion of the earthquake spectrum.
Some steel buildings were also severely
damaged due to buckling of diagonal
bracing.
Reportedly, no prestressed concrete
buildings were damaged during the
earthquake. This may have been partly
due to the care exercised in their design
and construction. Complete reports on
the performance of structures during the
Sendai earthquake are expected to be
released in the near future.
Active planning and preliminary de-
PCI JOURNAL/November-December 1978
sign is underway in Japan for the appli-
cation of prestressed concrete in several
important sea applications:
Two large oil storage facilities on
Kyushu are being placed underwater to
minimize their environmental impact and
to provide greater security. One such
project will store 40,000,000 barrels of
crude oil in seven large prestressed
concrete tanks, either bottom-founded,
or permanently-moored underwater so
as to be decoupled from possible earth-
quake shocks. Double-hull construction
will provide added protection, since the
outer compartment will be filled with salt
water ballast.
Several companies are developing
designs for floating plants for LNG
liquefaction, storage, and regassi-
fication, using prestressed concrete be-
cause of its favorable and safe perfor-
mance under extreme cold. Research is
being intensively carried out on the criti-
cal aspects of this application.
Comprehensive feasibility studies
are underway for two offshore floating
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Fig. 9. (top and bottom). Prestressea
hollow-core slabs (Dynaspan and
Spancrete) are manufactured to ex-
tremely tight tolerances, edge perfec-
tion, and blemish-free surface. These
slabs are used for walls in multistory
buildings, and are often coated with a
translucent vinyl, which requires perfect
surface and joints.
airports. One project is of moderate size
while the other is a large job and in-
tended for the new Osaka International
Airport.
Present plans call for the exterior of
the pontoons to be prestressed con-
crete, with the stiffeners and internal
members to be either steel or pre-
stressed concrete. Engineering prob-
lems yet to be resolved include the
mooring of such a structure during a
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typhoon and the treatment of the articu-
lated joints between pontoons.
Prestressing techniques are being
used to join the large precast sunken
tunnel segments used in constructing
the Tokyo Harbor railway tunnel. These
joints are specially designed to accom-
modate substantial articulation during a
major earthquake, while still remaining
watertight.
For the underbase grouting of this and
an adjoining highway tunnel, mortar is
injected through inlet pipes in the floor of
the tunnel, on a 5 x 10 m (approx. 16 to
32 ft) grid. This enables the work to be
carried out from inside the tunnel.
Unbonded tendons are being exten-
sively used in bridges, harbor structures,
buildings and other structures. The use
of the greased-and-plastic encased ten-
don is being encouraged as a solution
to earlier difficulties experienced in ob-
taining complete grouting. Similarly,
ground anchors of moderate and large
capacity are being manufactured with
plastic encasements through the un-
bonded area.
Tests are being conducted on early
unbonded tendons which used bitumas-
tic coating. These involve sheet piles,
after 17 years' service, and railway
sleepers (ties) after 20 years of use. In
both cases, results to-date appear ex-
cellent.
Extensive fire tests are being carried
out in Dr. Ban's General Building Re-
search Laboratory near Osaka, with col-
umns and wall panels being tested in the
vertical attitude, while subjected to de-
sign vertical loads.
In his structural laboratory, vertically-
oriented cylindrical shells, similar to
those used in nuclear power plant con-
tainment structures and in some sea
structures, were being tested under
high-amplitude, low-cycle shear. The
crack pattern at ultimate appeared to be
independent of steel percentages, al-
though higher percentages and equal
percentages (circumferentially and verti-
cally) did reduce the crack width. Ulti-
Fig. 10. Prestressed hollow-core piling, autoclaved to achieve 10,000-psi
(69 MPa) strength.
mate strength in shear was essentially
determined by the yield of steel in both
directions, even though the percentages
of steel in the two directions varied from
unity to a ratio of2to1.
At the research laboratories of Shinko
Wire Co. in Amagasaki, extensive re-
search is underway in developing a
more efficient prestressing steel and
new anchorage systems.
For anchoring of stays of stayed girder
bridges, they have tested the usual
socket with steel balls and epoxy, but
without the common buttonheads on the
wires. Fatigue tests reported show full
performance, with all wire breakage out-
side the socket. This system is now
being applied to a pedestrian bridge
under construction.
Other tests relate to the study of
stress relaxation under conditions which
simulate the reduction in strain due to
creep and shrinkage.
The Shinko laboratories have recently
acquired very advanced equipment, in-
cluding scanning electron microscopes.
PCI JOURNAL/November-December 1978
Much of the work, under the direction of
Dr. Akira Doi, is indeed impressive.
Prestressed concrete piles are now
being considered for more extensive use
in harbor structures. Up to now, such
use has been very limited due to un-
familiarity with the durability and moment
resisting capabilities of this piling, but
wider use is expected in the future, par-
tially as a result of technical data
supplied by FIP Member Groups (in-
cluding the Prestressed Concrete Insti-
tute).
The most spectacular structures now
underway are those which will connect
the several main islands of Japan. The
Honshu-Hokkaido Seikan tunnel, with its
23 km (141/2 miles) underwater section
(longest in the world), is now more than
50 percent complete. Also, several of
the Honshu-Shikoku bridges, whose
three routes will contain 25 major
bridges, including the world's longest
suspension bridge [178 m span (5840
ft) I are well along in construction.
The Omishima steel tied arch bridge is
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Fig. 11 Another view of prestressed hollow-core piles, autoclaved to achieve
10,000-psi (69 MPa) strength.
now nearing completion. Its 300-m (980
ft) span is effectively shortened by pre-
stressed tie-back ground anchors tying
each end of the deck to the rock abut-
ments. The substructures of two other
major bridges are also nearing comple-
tion. On one of these, the Ohnaruto
Bridge, the two major piers are carried
forward despite tidal currents up to 8
knots, which produce a dangerous
whirlpool effect adjacent to one pier.
Construction will soon start on the
third route, which will be the major rail-
highway link between Honshu and
Shikoku. Its southern anchorage caisson
will contain 260,000 m 3 (340,000 cu yds)
of underwater concrete.
Although most of the bridges will be
steel suspension bridges, prestressing
materials and techniques will be exten-
sively employed in various aspects of
these giant projects.
Concluding Remarks
While I was in Japan, I met with FIP
Vice President (Japan) Dr. S. Inomata
and other members of the Japan Pre-
76
stressed Concrete Engineering Associa-
tion (Prof. Muguruma, Mr. Unagami, Dr.
Doi, Mr. Tanaka and others), many of
whom are familiar to FIP and PCI
through participation in past FIP Con-
gresses and PCI Conventions.
I am grateful for the opportunity to visit
Japan and review the country's de-
velopments in prestressed concrete and
ocean engineering. The exchange of
information has been very worthwhile
especially in advancing new technology
and in promoting good international re-
lations.
The Japanese should justifiably feel
proud of their accomplishments in the
field of prestressed concrete. Indeed,
there is much we can learn from their
experiences and achievements.
Acknowledgment
The trip to Japan was made possible
through the assistance of the National Sci-
ence Foundation of the United States, under
administration of the American Society of
Civil Engineers. The opinions expressed in
this article are mine and do not necessarily
reflect those of the above organizations.