Database evaluation of shear strength of prestressed concrete beams

Shear design in prestressed concrete members is a complex and ambiguous task, and there is no recognized design procedure. For this reason, it is crucial to establish a reliable database that can be used to develop these regulations or compare them with experimental results. In this study, a database of shear tests of prestressed concrete beams was collected from filtered 266 existing test results. Then, the database was applied to five current design codes and two representative existing models, to evaluate the prediction accuracy of shear strength. The comparison results showed that Marí et al. method provided the most accurate prediction for prestressed concrete beams, but it had larger COV. A simplified formula of shear strength based on truss-arch model was proposed, and the calculation results of the proposed model were compared with the test results of prestressed concrete beams, which proved that the proposed model had the ability to predict the shear strength of prestressed concrete beams. In addition, compared with other methods, the proposed model showed better accuracy and consistency. Thus, the simplified formula may be a feasible improvement as an alternative shear strength analysis method for prestressed concrete beams with shear reinforcement.