Prestressed concrete building design and construction

by Charles W. Dolan · H. R. (Trey) Hamilton

Prestressed concrete building design and construction: For over a decade we have been teaching Prestressed Concrete using Nilson’s Design of Prestressed Concrete or Lin and Burn’s Design of Prestressed Concrete Structures, both of which are over two decades old.

These sources are augmented by the PCI Design Handbook, the PTI Design Handbook, and the prestressed concrete chapters of other texts.

None of these are fully satisfactory to present the student or the practicing engineer with the basics and intricacies of prestressed concrete design. Between us, we have nearly 30 years of experience as design engineers and 50 years of experience in teaching and research.

We have a unique perspective of having been both practitioners and educators.

As such, we have gathered the salient features of the existing literature and combined it with our teaching and practice experience.

In Prestressed concrete building design and construction, we have gathered the fundamental principles coupled with design and construction realities.

To this end, the development of Prestressed concrete building design and construction begins with first principles then proceeds to give results based on those principles, and as interpreted by Building Codes.

In some examples, we let the student see that the first trial solution is not acceptable and that multiple trials are needed to obtain a satisfactory solution.

By constructing aids in EXCEL or MathCad, students can see the interaction of mechanics in prestressed concrete and how trials are quickly refined.

Where appropriate, we discuss prestressing plant and on-site post-tensioning operations that affect the design.