Prestressed Concrete in Buildings

In design practice today it is usual to carry out the detailed design of members of conventional reinforced concrete, structural steelwork or prestressed concrete using computer software. Although much time is saved, this may have the unfortunate consequence that the much of the "feel" for the design is lost. This is particularly true in prestressed concrete, especially when indeterminate members are involved. Indeed the topic may be less well understood as many undergraduate courses neglect the teaching of the subject almost entirely. Thus the design of prestressed concrete members, in buildings particularly, is often left to specialist contractors. The focus of this book is to provide a conceptual understanding of the topic. The approach taken is design-based rather than a more rigorously analytical one. Hand-based methods are emphasized where relevant. Numerous worked examples are presented as well as extended examples on a pre-tensioned double tee floor and a post tensioned flat plate floor to illustrate the points made. The codes used are the European Code EC2 and the Concrete Society Technical Report TR43, while, for comparison, reference is sometimes made to other codes, e.g., the American Code ACI-318.