The Florida International University's 2020 Big Beam Team greatly appreciated the opportunity to participate in this competition. The presented report is a step by step design procedure for designing prestressed concrete beams which is expected to perform and fail in a predefined load. The chosen design was a I‐shaped member composed of four straight prestressing strands, and incorporating two compression longitudinal bars. The beam was designed supported span of 18 ft., center-to-center of bearing, and a total length of 19 ft. The loading consists of two point loads as live load and the beam self-weight as dead load. The beam is designed to remain uncracked under the unfactored live load of 20 kips (10 kips at each point) and have capacity of more than factored live load of 32 kips. The final capacity should be less than 40 kips. The team predicted the cracking load, failure load, and ultimate deflection of the beam using a moment‐curvature analysis.
Design of Prestressed Concrete Beams for Specific Performance