NUMERICAL ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF PRESTRESSED CONCRETE CONTINUOUS BEAMS

A numerical procedure for the analysis and design of a prestressed concrete continuous beam based on the Newmark's method and the force method of matrix analysis has been presented. The bending moments at the interior supports have been chosen as the redundants so that the released structure comprises of a series of simply supported beams. With this choice of the released structure, each span of the continuous beam may be analysed independently of the other span by the conjugate beam method. The procedure can be used for the analysis and design of a prestressed concrete continuous beam of varying cross-section, curved non-parabolic cable profiles and carrying any type of irregular loading. The procedure has been explained with the help of an illustrative example in this paper. (Author/TRRL)