CONCEPT OF BONDED AND UNBONDED PRESTRESSED CONCRET MEMBER

PRESTRESS:-

Prestress can be defined as the technique in which the stresses of suitable magnitude is
imparted to the RCC concrete member by means of tensioning the high yield strength (say fy
=1800N/mm2) steel strand or cable inserted into the concrete before the concrete is pouring
into the mould or casing and the prestress in induced to the concrete member prior to
application of any external loads (live loads) acting on the member. This prestressing to
conceret is done to counteract or balance the external moment or forces due to dead load &
live load) to a desired degree. Mainly prestress can be divided into two types: - 1) Pre tensioned
and 2) post tensioned prestressed concrete members.

PRE TENSIONED MEMBER:-

Here the pretension steel is first tensioned and fixed or anchored apart at two ends. After
tensioning the wire only concrete is poured into the mould or casing. Once after concrete sets
or hardened (say after 28 days), the prestressing steel is released from both the ends, thereby
inducing suitable magnitude of prestress to the concrete through the concrete and prestressing
steel interface.

POST TENSIONED MEMBER:-

Here the steel is placed inside the steel hollow duct or pipe which housing the prestressing
cable in the casing or mould and kept without tensioning. Due to the steel duct or pipe there
will be no contact between prestressing steel and surrounding concrete. Now concrete is
poured into the casing or mould and let the concrete to hardened say for a 28 days. Once after
concrete hardened then only the tensioning operation of prestressing steel in done by means of
hydraulic jack and fixed at the ends of the member by means of anchorage steel plates. Here
due to lack of bond the prestress is induce into the concrete member by means of end steel
anchorages which are fixed at the ends of beams.

Post tensioned concrete is classified as BONDED AND UNBONDED types.

BONDED POST TENSIONED CONCRETE

In case of bonded post tensioned concrete the steel hollow pipe or duct which housing the
prestressing cable is filled with cement mortar or grout only after the completion of
prestressing operation (remember prestressing is done here only after the concrete attains its
full strength or hardened). Now once the grout gets hardened bond is created between the
prestressing cable and the duct/pipe thereafter pestressing cable cannot move freely anymore,
it is also nearly the same concept as that of PRESTRENSIONIG, but here tensioning is done after
the concrete gets hardened. Here prestress steel is having complete bond throughout its length
due to hardening of epoxy grout or cement mortar.

UNBONDED POST TENSIONED CONCRETE

In this case the steel hollow duct/ pipe which housing or carrying the prestressing cable cannot
be epoxy grouted or filled with any cement mortar and there will be some gap between the
housing duct/pipe and the prestressing steel. Hence, it is called unbonded case because the
bond is absent between duct and PS steel. Since the duct/ pipe is housed inside the concrete
there assumed a firm bond beween the duct/pipe and surrounding concrete.

ANSYS APDL

In ANSYS APDL this bonded and unbonded behavior of post tensioned prestressed concrete can
be done by assigning a contact pair element (such as target 170 and conta175/174) or by
combination element (such as combine39) between the interface of prestressing steel and
surrounding concrete. If we use contact pair element as mentioned above the procedure is
same for both the cases but by changing few properties of the contact pair element we can
establish a bonded and unbonded condition to the member. Here the prestressing steel is free
to move on application of load due to absence of epoxy grout or mortar.

If we use combine 39, then we require load vs. slip relationship values (from mathematical
expression) as input to model the bonded & unbonded contact behavior, which is bit difficult.

MY DIFFICULTIES

I am unable to model the parabolic cable (using link 180) profile inside the solid concrete
volume element (solid65) using GUI IN APDL. Link 180 is capable of tension/compression
property only, whereas if we use beam188 it has bending characteristics in addition to
tension/compression property. In actual practice the prestressing cable is subjected to only
tensile force not bending, so conceptually it is difficult to use beam 188 instead of link element.

I am also unable to assign prestressing to link element and facing much difficulty to create the
bonded and unbonded condition between the PS steel concrete interfaces.
Thank you,

Regards,

Pandimani