This study aims to strengthen the flexural behavior of structural elements with external pre-stressing tendons, thereby improving their load-carrying capacity and increasing their resistance against the external load. Different techniques were used to apply external pre-stressed strengthening to RC beams and RC frames. Seven identical RC frames were analyzed: an original sample without an external tendon, two strengthened samples with external tendons at the positive bending zone, two strengthened samples with external tendons at the beam–column connection zone, a strengthened sample with external straight line tendons along the beam and, finally, a strengthened sample with external U-shape tendons along the beam of the frame. The analysis and the results were obtained using ANSYS WORKBENCH finite element (FE) program. Comparisons were performed between these techniques to determine which technique is better for strengthening. The failure mode, vertical deflection, column stress, load-carrying capacity, and ductility of the samples were listed and analyzed under four-point vertical loading. The results show that using external tendons significantly increases the load capacity and the stiffness of structural frames. Moreover, the tendon in the beam zone is more effective than the tendon in the column zone.

The objective of the research is to improve the structural behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) T–beams by applying various techniques of external pre-stressing tendons, thus enhancing the load-carrying capacities and raising the resistance to applied forces. Seven identical RC T–beams were subjected to four-point loading to study the influence of the deviator number, tension mechanism, and tendon profile on flexural behavior. Of these, one beam was an original specimen without any tendons. The other six beams were strengthened with external tendons: two identical specimens with straight–line tendons but with a different number of inner deviators; two identical specimens with V–shaped tendons but with a different tension direction; and finally, two identical specimens with U–shaped tendons but with a different tension direction. The results and discussion were achieved using finite element (FE) software, ANSYS WORKBENCH. The results from all specimens were listed and analyzed for the failure mechanism, load-carrying capacity, deflection, and ductility. According to the FE results, external tendons greatly enhance the load-carrying and stiffness of RC beams. In addition, strengthening beams with external pre-stressing techniques can delay the early cracking load, yield load, and ultimate load by approximately 250%, 570%, and 30%, respectively, when compared to an unstrengthened beam. Moreover, the straight-line tendon with inner deviators was obtained to be the most effective technique for simple beams.

Movement joints are needed in bridges to accommodate longitudinal expansion and contraction. Enough joint width needs to be available to accommodate not only longitudinal expansion but also expected movements of joints during earthquakes. This may result in excessive joint openings. Devices that can dissipate energy have been suggested to reduce joint displacements. Shape memory alloy (SMA) is one of these energy dissipation devices, which is well known for its ability to return to its natural shape after being deformed. Several cases of bridges and different conditions of seismic events are modeled and tested using developed software programs in MATLAB to show the efficiency of using SMA inside bridge joint openings. These models include the case of two adjacent frames with SMA inside them (2–frames), the case of multi–frames with constant hysteretic SMAs between every two of them (N–frames), the case of multi–frames with constant hysteretic SMAs taking the delay of seismic forces between frames into consideration (delay), and the case of variable masses of bridge frames. Also, parametric studies are performed to show the impacts of all parameters of bridge frames and SMA retrofit devices on seismically joint openings. The results show that the superelastic SMA device plays a huge role in controlling bridge opening and enables limiting the joint width of all models during earthquakes with different values reaching 60% in some cases depending on bridge frame properties, ground motion characteristics, and the hysteretic properties of SMA devices.

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