Design of beams | 79 ’ 6 DESIGN OF BEAMS 61 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to combine all the design principles discussed in previous chapters to develop a complete design procedure for a reinforced concrete beam. Reinforced concrete beam primarily is a structural member that resist lateral loading in bending, shear, torsion and bond. The design of a reinforced concrete beam must comply with the ultimate and serviceability limit states, ‘The steps in beam design are as follows. Determine design life 1 2. Determine preliminary size of beam 3. Estimate actions on beam 4. Assess durability requirements and determine conerete strength 5. Determine nominal cover for durability, fire and bond requirements 6. Analysis structure to obtain critical moments and shear forces 7. Design of flexural reinforcement 8. Design shear reinforcement 9. Verify deflection 10. Verify cracking II. Produce detail drawings 6.2 Preliminary Size of Beam ‘The selection of beams sizes from structural viewpoint is often dictated by deflection control criteria as ‘well as requirements related to the placement of reinforcement. In practice, the overall depths of beams are often fixed in relation to their spans. Span to overall depth ratios of 13 to 18 are generally found to be economical in the case of simply supported and continuous beams. The recommended ratio of width to overall depth in rectangular beam section is in the range of 0.3 to 0.6, However there are other structural, economic and architectural considerations that come into play’ in the selection of beams sizes. In the case of building frames for example, the width of beams should be less than or equal to the dimensions of columns into which they frame. Where the beam is required to support masonry wall, the width of the beam is often made such that its sides are flush with the finished surfaces of the wall. Very deep beams are generally not desirable, as they result in loss of headroom or an increase in the building height.80 | Design of beams 6.3 Estimation of Actions ‘Actions that applied on a beam may consist of beams self-weight, dead and imposed loads from slabs, actions from secondary beams and other structural or non-structural members supported by the beam. The distribution of slab actions on beams depends on the slab dimension, supporting system and boundary condition. Beams supporting slabs designed as spanning one-way can be considered to be uniformly loaded as shown in Figure 6.1 Beam AB and CD. w=OkNim —— Beam AC and BD n= uniformly distributed action on slab per unit area Figure 6.2: Actions from one-way slab (I/l, > 2.0) ‘When designing the beams supporting a two-way slab panel freely supported along or with the same degree of fixity along all four edges, it is generally accepted that each of the beams along the shorter edges of the panel carries the load on an area having the slope of 45° isosceles triangle as shown in Figure 6.3. w= (nlJ6)[3 ~ UvA) 1 KN/m 1 rr Beam AB and CD w= (nb/3) KN/m K < 4 Beam AC and BD Figure 6.3: Actions from two-way slab (Il, $2.0) There are alternatives methods which consider various support conditions and slab continuity. The methods are, (i). Slab shear coefficient from Table 3.15 BS 8110, (ii). Yield line analysis and (iii), Table 63 Reinforced Concrete Designer's Handbook by Reynold.E Design of beams | 81 63 Simply Supported Beams Failure mode, bending moment and m forcement of a simply supported beam is shown in Figure 64. le Cee Te a Made or faire Flexural crack, Bending moment Position of main 7 reinforcement Figure 6.4: Simply supported beam ‘The effective span of a simply supported beam is defined in EC 2: Section 5.3.2.2. This should be taken as L=Iytata where L, = clear distance between the faces of the supports ay, as= min {0.5h; 0.58}, where fis the overall depth of the beam and ¢ is the width of the supporting element. Effective spans for different support conditions are given in figure 6.5 a min va az me mecan rat, (6) Supports considered tully rastrained (a) Bearing provided fp () Cantiover Figure 6.5: Effective span for different support conditions