ABSTRACT
The topic that is often listed under the simple heading “Shear” in books and building codes is a design challenge in reinforced concrete created by the combination of shear and bending stresses. Consider the simply supported beam in Figure 29.1 with two concentrated loads placed at equal distances from the two reactions. The beam is homogeneous and weightless. Shear and moment diagrams for the loading assumed are included in Figure 29.1. We shall refer to the portions of the beam span subjected to shear as the shear spans without ignoring the fact that there is also moment in the shear spans. In the portion of the weightless beam between the applied loads, there is no shear and the moment is constant. We shall refer to this portion as the exure span.
