560.

325 Homework Assignment 3

two problems due Tuesday, October 4 at 5pm, Latrobe 212
office hours: M 10-11, Tu 10-11 and 1-2:30 (rm 212)

1. A beam is 16 inches wide and 36 inches high with material properties f'c = 3000 psi and
fy = 60,000 psi. There are two layers of steel with four #10 rebars in each layer (so there
is a total of eight #10 rebars). The centeroid of the lower layer is 2.5 inches from the
bottom and the centeroid of the upper layer is 5.5 inches from the bottom.
(a) Follow Example 3.4 on page 25 and find the maximum nominal moment Mn and design
strength φMn.
(b) Find the values for the steel strain at the two layers. Show that all of the steel in the
concrete beam would be yielding at the maximum nominal moment.

2. (a) A simply supported beam has a span of 30 feet and is subjected to a uniform live load of
2,000 lb/ft. The uniform dead load is equal to 1,500 lb/ft plus the self-weight of the
beam.
There are three ways to estimate the self-weight of the beam:
use 15% of the total load (which is 2,000+1,500 lb/ft);
use h = .09L and b = h/2 (where L is the span) to estimate the volume per foot; or
use the average of the preceding two estimates.
For this problem , use the third way (the average of the estimates).
Design the beam using f'c = 4,000 psi and fy = 60,000 psi using a steel ratio of ρ
approximately equal to 0.5ρb.
Follow Example 3.5 from page 27 to page 28. The goal is to find the dimensions b, h, d
and the area of steel As. There is no restriction on the total beam depth h. Thus, the
homework will differ slightly from Example 3.5 in step 3' in the bottom of page 27. In
this step, you must find suitable values for d and b. Try to keep the ratio of d/b close to
2.5. Assume the rebars can fit on one row. You do not have to figure out the size and
locations of the rebars – you just need the area of steel.
Don't bother with the analysis of bd2 on the sixth line of page 28. (You still need to
recalculate the moment on the fifth line.)

(b) Some designers use the rule ρ = 0.18 f'c / fy instead of ρ = 0.5ρb during the initial design
of the beam in step 1' (towards the bottom of page 27).
In this part of the homework, you only need one line of calculation and one or two
sentences to compare the results of the two rules (ρ = 0.18 f'c / fy versus ρ = 0.5ρb) and
the final result for ρ in your design in part (a) that you got from step 2a.