The safety and sustainability of prestressed concrete bridges can be improved with accurate prestress loss prediction. Considerable loss of the prestress force may imply damages hidden in the bridge. In this study, a prestress force identification method was implemented for concrete beams. Based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, the procedure estimates the prestress force by using one or a set of static displacements measured along the member axis. The implementation of this procedure requires information regarding the flexural rigidity of the beam. The deflected shape of a post-tensioned concrete beam, subjected to an additional vertical load, was measured in a short term in several laboratory experiments. The accuracy of the deflection measurements provided favorable prestress force estimates. In particular, the “compression-softening” theory was validated for uncracked post-tensioned concrete beams.

Prestressing methods were used to realize long-span bridges in the last few decades. For their predictive maintenance, devices and dynamic nondestructive procedures for identifying prestress losses were mainly developed since serviceability and safety of Prestressed Concrete (PC) girders depend on the effective state of prestressing. In fact, substantial long term prestress losses can induce excessive deflections and cracking in large span PC bridge girders. However, old unsolved problematics as well as new challenges exist since a variation in prestress force does not significantly affect the vibration responses of such PC girders. As a result, this makes uncertain the use of natural frequencies as appropriate parameters for prestress loss determinations. Thus, amongst emerging techniques, static identification based on vertical deflections has preliminary proved to be a reliable method with the goal to become a dominant approach in the near future. In fact, measured vertical deflections take accurately and instantaneously into account the changes of structural geometry of PC girders due to prestressing losses on the equilibrium conditions, in turn caused by the combined effects of tendon relaxation, concrete creep and shrinkage, and parameters of real environment as, e.g., temperature and relative humidity. Given the current state of quantitative and principled methodologies, this paper represents a state-of-the-art review of some important research works on determining prestress losses conducted worldwide. The attention is principally focused on a static nondestructive method, and a comparison with dynamic ones is elaborated. Comments and recommendations are made at proper places, while concluding remarks including future studies and field developments are mentioned at the end of the paper.

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