Introduction to Pre-stressed Concrete
The idea of prestressed concrete has been around since the latter decades of the 19th century, but its use was limited by the quality of the materials at the time. It took until the 1920s and ‘30s for its materials development to progress to a level where prestressed concrete could be used with confidence. Freyssinet in France, Magnel in Belgium and Hoyer in Germany were the principal developers.
Pre-stressed concrete is a particular form of reinforced concrete. Pre-stressing involves the application of an initial compressive load on a structure to reduce or eliminate the internal tensile forces and thereby control or eliminate cracking. The initial compressive load is imposed and sustained by highly tensioned steel reinforcement reacting on the concrete. With cracking reduced or eliminated, a pre-stressed section is considerably stiffer than the equivalent (usually cracked) reinforced section. Pre-stressing may also impose internal forces which are of opposite sign to the external loads and may therefore significantly reduce or even eliminate deflection.
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