Effectiveness of external prestressing in enhancing the non-ductile hanger failure mechanism in reinforced concrete inverted T-beams

Recently, inverted T-beams have been used in reinforced concrete (RC) bridges to support transverse precast stringers. Inverted T-beams, contrary to practice with conventional beams, are loaded on the flanges upper surface. This loading configuration causes hanger failure due to the generation of vertical tensile stresses near the bottom of the web. The key purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of vertical external prestressing stainless-steel bars in mitigating non-ductile hanger failure in reinforced concrete inverted T-beams. An experimental study on six inverted-T beams, including two un-strengthened specimens, was carried out. The study showed that the value of the prestressing level had a considerable impact on the performance of hanger mechanism in relation to crack pattern, ultimate loads, cracking behavior, load–deflection, strains, and ductility. The experimental results indicated that the suggested method for strengthening inverted T-beams had efficacy in reducing the seriousness of the non-ductile hanger failure and resulted in a strength increase of up to 53% when compared to that of the un-strengthened specimen. Additionally, two analytical models for estimating the hanger capacity and the average crack width of the strengthened RC inverted T-beams were proposed. The models that were proposed exhibited a high degree of agreement with the experimental results.