Fatigue Testing of Shear Reinforcement in Prestressed Concrete T-Beams of Bridges

In the recent years, bridges, as an important part of the national and international infrastructure, had to comply with stricter requirements due to increased heavy load traffic. Many of these bridge structures built in the 1960s and 1970s often contain less web reinforcement than the modern required minimum web reinforcement. In this context, the shear resistance under cyclic loading is of special interest. For this reason, experimental tests were conducted on prestressed concrete beams with and without shear reinforcement at the Institute of Structural Concrete of RWTH Aachen University to investigate the shear fatigue strength. This paper describes the recent tests on ten T-shaped prestressed beams with web reinforcement. The specimens were able to resist more load cycles than predicted by the approaches implemented in the Eurocodes for bridges. Based on the test results, design models for shear under cyclic loading should be reviewed and improved, especially regarding the assessment of existing structures.