11.11.

1 Concrete Shear Capacity

Shear is likely to be critical in concrete flat plates supported directly on columns.
The shear strength of prestressed concrete flat plates is governed by the more severe
of the following two conditions:
 beam-type shear behavior with potential diagonal cracking failure along the
plane of principal tension (Fig. 11.20a), and
 punching shear behavior with potential diagonal cracking failure along a
truncated pyramid-shaped (or cone-shaped) surface around the column (Figs.
11.20b and 11.20c).

For beam-type shear, the plate is considered to act as a wide beam and the related
shear design provisions are identical to those of beams covered in Sec. 6.8. In
particular, the first critical section is taken at a distance h/2 from the face of the
column and no shear reinforcement is needed unless vu exceeds Svc. Figure 11.21
illustrates the type of critical section along which beam type shear is to be evaluated.
For comparison, the figure also illustrates sections for punching shear around
different types of columns.
Because prestressed concrete flat plates generally contain some amount of
nonprestressed flexural reinforcement at the critical sections, de will be used instead
of dp. Of course, de = dp for a fully prestressed section. Also often in slabs where
similar concrete covers and reinforcement diameters are used, ds = dp =de .