Experimental study of prestressed steel-concrete composite beams with external tendons for negative moments

Four groups of prestressed steel-concrete composite beams with external tendons in negative moment regions were tested, and the cracking behaviours and the ultimate negative moment resistances of the composite beams were investigated experimentally. It is found that in hogging moment regions, on adding prestressing to the composite beams with external tendons, the cracking resistance of the beams can be effectively increased; however, the incremental internal tendon forces of the prestressed composite beams are rather small, and therefore can be neglected in the evaluation of the negative moment resistance of the beams. In hogging moment regions, the ultimate resistance of a composite beam prestressed with external tendons is governed by either distortional lateral buckling or local buckling, or an interactive mode composed of the two bucklings. For a beam with a compact section, the negative bending moment can reach the plastic moment when the steel section is fully plastic, and for a non-compact section, the negative bending moment is limited to the yield moment at which the compression steel flange initiates yield. The method for evaluating the buckling resistance of the composite beams is discussed, and a tentative design method based on BS5400: Part 3 is proposed to assess the buckling resistances of the prestressed composite beams.