Studies on Shear in Reinforced Concrete Beams

Although much has already been written on the subject of shear in reinforced concrete and although design practice has become almost uniformly standardized, there still remain a number of unsettled problems in reinforced concrete design. Standardization, however many its advantages, may easily become synonymous with stagnation. In many respects it can be said that, in the interest of getting structures built, unsettled points have simply been allowed to drop. “This apparently works all right” has been answer enough. Recently, both structural steel and reinforced concrete have begun to feel the benumbing effects of standardization, and some rather drastic revisions have been made in structural standards. Whenever such revisions are made it is of prime importance to re-examine the basis of structural theory to check the assumptions on which it is founded, and to weigh carefully the supporting evidence of experiment.