Creep and stress relaxation in tendons at changing temperature

Abstract

The authors have developed a new theory able to predict accurately the long term prestress losses when the temperature tendon is changing both with tinme and along its length. With the aim of checking the theory an experimental arrangement has been designed, built and calibrated enabling the simulation of tendons at changing temperature with time as well as along its length. This paper presnts the experimental results obtained both in relaxation tests and in creep tests and they are compared to theoretical predictions checking the good agreement between theory and experiments.