Stress State of Pretensioned Structures

Prestressed structures are used in civil engineering and other sectors of industry for the production of pressure vessels of the reactors and protective shells for nuclear plants, storage tanks for liquefied gas, etc. In such structures, pretension may reach great magnitudes depending on the manufacturing process during the fabrication or later with the addition of the operational loads. Therefore, it is necessary to address the prestressed state in order to predict optimal loading for the structural elements in the design process of these structures. In this study, the prestressed states of these structures are investigated using an analogy between the prestressed state and the thermoelasticity problems by the photothermoelasticity. Detailed information about the stress distribution in entire structures, locations, and magnitudes of the maximum stresses and bond stresses was obtained. Simultaneously, analytical relations were developed for the normal and shearing stress components between dissimilar materials in the joint zone.