Study of a cable force determination method in prestressed steel structures

In this paper two cable force determination methods were proposed based on the principle of direct determination, respectively based on using steel pipe ring crushing or strand tapered anchorage to connect cable. Experimental investigation was conducted to test the two force measurement devices; the results indicated that the two cable force measurement devices could effectively transfer the cable's internal force, while the first one (with steel pipe ring crushing) could not stably connect the cable. After calculating and analyzing the reasonable core structure size of the second device by the finite element analysis software, the structural practice of such devices were provided. The proposed cable force determination method using the strand tapered anchorage owns simple operation, low cost and high accuracy, which can provide a reference for similar tests and practical engineering.