Prestressed Beam Lab - Mold and Rebar

Prestress Beam Lab
This mold and rebar was designed by an instructor for an experiment at SDSU. The purpose of this experiment is to teach students how rebar and prestressing effects the flexural capacity of a beam created with plaster of paris. The prestress molds for this lab have multiple locations the rebar can be located and prestressed. This will give the students more design freedom when creating their experiments and increase the variation of experiments between the groups.

The three major changes the student can make to their beams is the location of rebar, the number of rebar used in the beam, and the size of the prestress force. Any single or combination of these changes can be made to the beams, it will be up to the students to decided which variables they want to investigate.

The beams in the pictures were tested until failure and the beam with no rebar had a maximum load of 200 lbs and the beam with prestressed rebar had a maximum load of 350 lbs.

More information on this lab and other labs will be available soon in the form of a lab manual from South Dakota State University