Finite element modeling of composite steel-concrete beams with external prestressing

In this paper, a nonlinear finite-element analyses have been carried out to investigate the behavior up to failure of simply supported composite steel-concrete beams with external prestressing, in which a concrete slab is connected together with steel I-beam by means of headed stud shear connectors, subjected to symmetrically static loading. ANSYS computer program (version 12.0) has been used to analyze the three dimensional model. This covers: load deflection behavior, strain in concrete, strain in steel beam and failure modes. The nonlinear material and geometrical analysis based on Incremental-Iterative load method, is adopted. Three models have been analyzed to verify its capability and efficiency. The results obtained by finite element solutions have shown good agreement with experimental results.