Structural Engineering & Statics
where the load goes
Concept

Block shear — where it appears

A failure in which a block of metal is torn out of a connection, bounded by a tension surface and one or more shear surfaces. It needs no bolt to break and no plate to reach its tensile strength anywhere, and its capacity is the sum of two different strengths on two different planes.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

pullshear plane, 180 mmtension plane, 40 mmcapacity 421.7 kN0.6 fu Anv = 322.5 kN · 0.6 fy Agv = 297 kN · fu Ant = 124.7 kNthe yield value governs the shear plane

The metal between the holes, which comes out as a block

A bolted end connection can fail without a single bolt breaking and without the plate reaching its tensile strength anywhere. A block of metal simply comes out, bounded by two surfaces with two different strengths on them.

connections · block shear the brace force30°b_eff = 367 mm90 mm4.08× the width anything is actually attached togoverns on the Whitmore section buckles, at 721 kN

The width nobody drew

Every other member in this collection arrives with a cross-section. A gusset plate does not — it is a piece of steel with a brace bolted to it somewhere in the middle, and no geometry says how much of it is working. The profession's answer is a thirty-degree spread from a 1952 master's thesis, it invents three quarters of the area being checked, and the check it was written for is not the one that governs.

connections · gusset

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Load pathNet sectionBearingBraceConnectionConnection designDispersionDuctilityEffective lengthGussetLimit statePlate buckling

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