DESIGN OF REINFORCED CONCRETE

ELEMENTS: BEAMS

DESIGN FOR SHEAR FORCES

 In beams, a change in bending moment involves shear
forces.
 Shear force at a section gives rise to diagonal tension or
compression in the concrete and leads to cracking.
 Since concrete is weak in tension, and shear force creates
tensile/compressive stress at a 45-degree angle.

 Concrete beams that fail in shear will fail at roughly a 45-

degree angle to the centerline of the beam.

 Concrete fails rapidly hence shear failures are very

dangerous and therefore should be avoided.

 All beams should always be designed to fail in a ductile

manner in flexure rather than in shear.
 If the shear force exceed the strength of the concrete then
you need to provide for shear reinforcement. The
reinforcement can be in the form of stirrups and inclined
bars. However, inclined bars are less frequently used in
construction today, due to difficult in actual construction
work.
 The design for shear resistance mainly involves:
i. Determining shear resistance of the links.
ii. Determining form, area and spacing of the links.

I. Shear resistance of the links.

 Consider a reinforced concrete beam with links uniformly
spaced at a distance sv, under the action of a shear force
V.
This provides the basis for calculating the minimum area of
and spacing of links.

Form, area and spacing of links.

II.

Shear reinforcement should be provided in beams according

to the criteria given in the table below: