Fatigue tests on profiled prestressed concrete beams under shear load

The demands on bridge structures have been increasing for years as a result of rising traffic volume, especially in freight traffic. This also results in augmented requirements regarding the shear resistance, in particular under cyclic loading. To describe the fatigue behavior of profiled prestressed concrete T- and I-beams under cyclic shear loading, tests were carried out at the Institute for Structural Concrete at RWTH Aachen University. In particular, the effects of different shear reinforcement ratios, maximum loads and shear force amplitudes were investigated. The tests with a shear reinforcement ratio of approx. 0.67 % represent a supplement to test series carried out in the past with less or without shear reinforcement. The cyclic loading leads to a successive failure of the shear reinforcement and a subsequent rearrangement of forces, which happens during an interval extending over several hundred thousand load cycles. In the tests, significantly more load cycles are achieved than calculated by current design approaches for shear due to fatigue. The results of the six most recent tests on I-beams will be presented in the following article.