Investigation of the Effect of the Force Arm on the Bending Capability of Prestressed Glulam Beam

Abstract

Prestress enables the Glulam beam could make full use of the compression strength, and then increase the span, but it still could not reduce all drawbacks, such as cross-section weakening and small force arm. To avoid slotting and ensure suitable tension and compression couple, one kind of novel anchor has been proposed, which could meet the bearing capacity requirement. And then the bending test of prestressed Glulam beams with a geometric scale ratio of 1: 2 was simulated, to investigate the effect of the force arm on bending capacities, failure modes, and deformation performance. Results show that increasing the force arm could improve the ultimate bending performance of the beam significantly, and the anchor arm length has a certain effect on the performance, but it is not obvious. Finally, based on Finite element method analysis, the practice design suggestions have been offered.