Structural Engineering & Statics
where the load goes
Concept

Composite action — where it appears

Two members bending as one because slip between them is restrained, which for two equal layers multiplies the second moment by four. It exists only while slip is restrained, so the connection between the layers is the whole of it, and a debonded composite member is two members.

Named by 17 essays across 5 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

The props decide where the stress ends up. Bottom-fibre stress in the steel of a 12 m composite beam carrying 12 kN/m of wet concrete and 18 kN/m afterwards. Unpropped, the bare steel takes the first stage alone and reaches 292 MPa; propped, the finished composite section takes everything and reaches 186 MPa — a ratio of 1.57. 62% of the unpropped beam's final stress was locked in before the slab was structural at all. The deflections differ by 1.73 times for the same reason, and no drawing of the finished beam distinguishes the two.

The structure that was never complete

Every analysis in this collection is of a finished structure loaded once. Real ones are built in pieces, and each piece carries whatever was present at the moment it became structural — so the stress in a member depends on when it arrived, which appears nowhere on any drawing.

structures · Construction sequence Four camber rules, and what each leaves on the finished beam. The same 12 m composite beam, cambered against four different things, followed through its own load history. Positive is a sag and negative a hog, and the point at the left of each line is the shape it was fabricated to. Cambering against the wet concrete leaves 12.7 mm of sag at the end and a flat beam on the day the slab is poured; cambering against the total load leaves the beam dead flat when fully loaded and hogged 37.9 mm — one part in 316 of the span — before anything is on it at all.

Built to the wrong shape on purpose

A cambered beam is fabricated curved upward so that load bends it down to something like straight. Nothing in the analysis changes, no stress anywhere is altered, and almost every mistake made with it is a bookkeeping mistake about which loads count.

deflection · Camber Two beams, or one beam four times as stiff. Two 200 × 150 planks spanning 4 m under 6 per millimetre. Loose, they have 112.5×10⁶ mm⁴ between them and deflect 16.2 mm, with the two faces at the interface sliding past one another. Bonded, the pair has 450.0×10⁶ — exactly 4 times as much, because doubling a depth cubes — and deflects 4.0 mm at half the extreme-fibre stress. Nothing was added but a restraint on slip. With connectors of stiffness 200 the same beam deflects 5.4 mm, which is 89% of the way from one bound to the other.

Two beams, or one beam four times as stiff

Stack two planks and they bend as two beams whose faces slide past one another. Bond the faces and the pair has one neutral axis, four times the second moment and half the stress. Nothing was added but a restraint on slip.

internal-forces · Composite action The same strain, two moduli, and a width multiplied to say so. A timber section with a steel plate in it, carrying 20.0 kNm. Plane sections stay plane, so the strain at a height is the same in both materials; Hooke's law then puts the stresses in the ratio of the moduli, which here is 19.09. Multiplying the stiffer material's WIDTH by that ratio gives a fictitious section of one material with the same neutral axis and the same forces — 595.2×10⁶ mm⁴ of it, against 351.0 for the same shape with the moduli ignored. The steel plate is 3.8% of the area and carries 43% of the moment, at 96 N/mm² against the timber's 5.0. The transform is not an approximation: it is compatibility and Hooke's law written down.

A section made of two materials, one of them pretended away

Multiplying a material's width by the ratio of the moduli produces a fictitious section of one material with the right neutral axis and the right forces. It is not a trick — it is compatibility and Hooke's law written down — and it says a stiff material takes what its modulus asks for.

sections · Transformed section Between two beams and one, and much nearer one. How composite a beam is, against the one dimensionless group that decides it: αL, where α² = K·EI∞/(EA*·EI₀). At αL = 0 the layers slide freely and the beam is two beams; past about 20 the connection is stiff enough that the last per cent is unbuyable. The beam drawn sits at αL = 15.8 and is 96% composite, deflecting 36.7 mm against 33.9 for full interaction and 110 for none. The curve is steep where a real design sits, which is why halving the number of studs does not halve anything.

Half the studs, and most of the beam

Bonding two layers together quadruples the stiffness of the pair. A real connection is a row of studs that deform, so the layers slide a little and the beam sits between the two answers — but not halfway between, and the number that decides where is a single dimensionless group.

internal-forces · Partial interaction Two faces, a couple, and a core that does none of it. A sandwich section 61.4 mm deep: two 0.7 mm faces separated by 60 mm of core. The bending is carried as a couple between the faces — 41 N/mm² of tension in one and compression in the other, over a lever arm of 60.7 mm — and the core carries a shear stress of 0.047 N/mm² and nothing else. The parallel-axis term is 98.8% of the section's second moment; the faces' own bending about their own centroids is 0.004% of it, and the core's is 1.2%. Separated by nothing at all the same two faces would be 2.3e+4 times less stiff.

Two skins and the space between them

A sandwich panel is a section made of a material that carries the bending and a material that carries none of it. The parallel-axis term is not a correction here — it is 98.8 per cent of the second moment — and the shear deflection is not a correction either.

sections · Sandwich section Two cantilevers, or one wall, and the beams decide which. The deflected shape of a coupled pair of 6 m walls, drawn against the two limits it lies between. Release the coupling beams entirely and the pair is two independent cantilevers, deflecting 111 mm. Make them rigid and it is one composite wall of the full width, deflecting 16 mm — 6.8 times stiffer, because the lever arm between the wall centroids is 8.40 m and everything inside either wall is smaller than that. Real beams of 600 × 350 mm over a 2.4 m opening land at 23 mm and carry 63% of the base overturning as an axial couple rather than as wall bending. The degree of coupling never reaches one, because a beam of finite depth cannot suppress the walls' curvature entirely.

Two walls that agreed to be one

A pair of shear walls with a row of doors between them is the commonest lateral system there is, and it has two readings that differ by a factor of seven. What decides which one applies is a beam 600 mm deep over a 2.4 m opening — and most of the overturning ends up as an axial couple that no bending diagram contains.

internal-forces · Wall coupling Eight slices is enough, and nobody would have guessed it. The error in a cracked section's moment capacity against the number of strips it was integrated with, for a 300 × 450 mm section with 1200 mm² of steel, measured against the same computation at 2048 strips. The point of the fibre method is that it contains no formula: slice the section, give every strip the strain the assumed curvature puts it at, move the neutral axis until the axial force balances, and sum. It handles a cracked section, a confined one, a prestressed one and a composite one with the same twenty lines. The discretisation costs 1.4% at 2 strips and 0.088% at 8 — and the convergence is not smooth, because what the error actually depends on is where the neutral axis falls relative to a strip boundary rather than on the strip count as such.

The section calculation with no formula in it

Every ordinary section result is a closed form, and each was derived once for one arrangement of material. Slice the section instead, give each strip the strain a curvature puts it at, and move the neutral axis until the axial force balances — and the same twenty lines answer for a cracked section, a confined one, a prestressed one and a composite one, having been told nothing about any of them.

sections · Fibre model The props decide where the stress ends up. Bottom-fibre stress in the steel of a 12 m composite beam carrying 6 kN/m of wet concrete and 9 kN/m afterwards. Unpropped, the bare steel takes the first stage alone and reaches 146 MPa; propped, the finished composite section takes everything and reaches 93 MPa — a ratio of 1.57. 62% of the unpropped beam's final stress was locked in before the slab was structural at all. The deflections differ by 1.73 times for the same reason, and no drawing of the finished beam distinguishes the two.

The section that changed while it was being loaded

A stress is computed from a moment and a section modulus. When part of the moment arrived while the section was a different shape, there is no single section modulus to divide by — the stresses add and the properties do not, and two identical finished beams can differ by half again in stress with nothing on the drawing to say which is which.

sections · Staged section Every reason a building is stiffer than its model, added up. The computed natural frequency of a floor, and the same frequency after each source of stiffness that was deliberately left out is put back. Not one of them is a modelling error. Cladding and partitions are stiffness nobody is allowed to rely on for strength; a nominally pinned connection is never pinned; a slab acts with its beam whether or not shear connectors were provided; and concrete between the cracks is stiffer than a cracked section assumes. Together they multiply the stiffness by 1.83 and the frequency by 1.35, because a frequency is the square root of a stiffness, and every factor is halved on the way through. The asymmetry is the finding: leaving stiffness out makes a deflection conservative and a vibration check unconservative in the direction that matters, since a stiffer floor has a higher frequency and sits further from the footfall range. The model here reads 4.40 Hz against a 5.2 Hz criterion and fails it; the floor reads 5.95 Hz and passes. The correction that would have got it right is exactly the stiffness nobody is willing to count on.

Stiffer than the model said

Measured natural frequencies of finished buildings come out between ten and sixty per cent above the values computed for them, consistently and in one direction only. Nothing on the list of reasons is a modelling error: every one is a real source of stiffness deliberately left out — and leaving stiffness out is conservative for deflection and unconservative for vibration.

deflection · Measured stiffness The axis moves when the section yields. Six sections, each drawn to its own scale, with their elastic neutral axis — the centroid, dashed — and their plastic neutral axis, the equal-area axis, solid. For the symmetric ones the two lines are the same line and the distinction never arises, which is why it is so easily missed. For the tee they are 23% of the depth apart, because the axis that makes the first moment of area vanish is not the axis that makes the two areas equal. The shape factors run from 1.144 to 1.800 across these six, and they are ratios of moduli taken about two DIFFERENT axes — which is also why an asymmetric section has two elastic section moduli, one to each extreme fibre, and only one plastic modulus. The tee's two elastic moduli differ by a factor of 2.78; a fully plastic section does not care which fibre reached yield first, so it has nothing to be two of.

The axis that moves when the section yields

An elastic section bends about its centroid. A fully plastic one bends about the axis that halves its area, and for anything symmetric those are the same line — which is why the distinction is almost never met. For a tee they are a fifth of the depth apart, and three things follow that the elastic calculation gives no warning of.

sections · Equal-area axis The check that depends on a date. Total deflection and the deflection occurring after the brittle finishes are built, for one 12 m beam, against the day those finishes go up. The total barely moves — the beam ends up where it ends up. The increment falls from 32 mm at a week to 14 mm at a year, because creep is fast at first and slow later and a partition built early inherits nearly all of it: 44% of the final creep has already happened by day 28. The span/500 limit is 24 mm and the span/250 limit is 48; this beam passes the first only after day 25. Camber subtracts from both terms of the difference and therefore changes the upper curve and not the lower one, which is the reason a cambered beam can satisfy every total-deflection check and still crack the wall.

The limit that depends on a date

Total deflection can nearly always be met, and on a long span it is met with camber. The limit that actually decides the member is the other one — the deflection occurring after the brittle finishes are built — and camber does nothing for it whatever, because it is subtracted from both terms of a difference. The same beam passes or fails on the day the partitions went up.

deflection · Incremental deflection The confinement that slenderness switches off. The capacity of a concrete-filled tube against slenderness, divided by the plain sum of its two materials. Below about λ̄ = 0.5 the concrete is confined and the section is worth more than its parts — up to 29 per cent for a stub. Above it the bonus is gone, because confinement needs the concrete to dilate, dilation needs strain, and a slender column buckles before it gets there. The column drawn is at λ̄ = 0.42 and has 0.3 per cent of a bonus, which is to say none. What does not switch off is the other half: at d/t = 80 an empty tube buckles locally at 286 N/mm², below its own yield of 355, and the filled one reaches 508 because the wall cannot go inward. That is worth more than the confinement ever was, and it applies at every slenderness.

Each one stops the other failing

A concrete cylinder crushes by splitting outward and a thin steel tube fails by rippling inward. Put one inside the other and each material's failure mode requires a movement the other one prevents, which is a much stronger statement than composite action.

materials · Filled tube The studs are evenly spaced and the demand is not. The force per unit length the shear connection carries along half of a 12 m composite beam, from Newmark's solution. It is largest at the support — 282 N/mm — falls to nothing at mid-span, and averages 156: the end studs are asked for 1.81 times the mean. Studs are nevertheless placed at a uniform spacing, and the justification is the one the variable-angle truss uses for its stirrups — a ductile connector sheds what it cannot carry to its neighbours, so the uniform distribution is a plastic redistribution and not a description of the elastic state.

The connection is busiest where the beam is not

A composite beam's studs are spaced evenly along it and the demand on them is not even at all. It peaks at the supports, where the bending stress is nothing, and falls to zero at mid-span, where the section is working hardest — so the connection is designed from a diagram nobody looks at.

internal-forces · Composite action Thirty years later, two concretes against one. Stress down the composite section after thirty years — a 160 mm slab cast 6 weeks after a 700 mm pretensioned beam — computed twice: with the slab as a second, younger concrete that creeps and shrinks by its own laws, and with it given the beam's concrete and age. With two concretes the slab ends at −0.15 N/mm² at its top and −0.30 at its bottom, the beam at −4.03 at its top and −7.43 at its soffit. With one, the slab is at −0.29 and −1.06, the beam at −2.22 and −8.37. The slab's own shrinkage has taken its compression away and handed it to the top of the beam, and the soffit — the fibre the prestress was designed to keep in compression — has lost 0.94 N/mm² of it. Compression is negative.

The slab that shrinks onto a finished beam

A precast beam with an in-situ slab cast on it is one member made of two concretes, and they do not age together. The slab's shrinkage is nearly the same whenever it is poured; what changes is how much shrinking the beam has left to share it with. Cast the slab at six weeks and it takes a ninth of the soffit's precompression away over thirty years. Cast it at a year and it takes a quarter, and goes into tension itself.

materials · Creep The rotation a bearing sees is made before it arrives. The end rotation of a 12 m pretensioned beam, 300 mm wide and 700 mm deep, with a 160 mm in-situ slab 1.2 m wide, in 60 per cent humidity, from the prestress's release at three days to thirty years, with sagging positive. Release turns each end 4.8 milliradians upward; creep takes it to 7.9 by day 28, when the beam is set on its bearings. The slab brings it back by 0.9, the surfacing by 0.1, and thirty years of creep take it to 8.1 upward. The band after erection is the imposed load (0.9 down) and a night with the top cooler (0.6 down) above the line, and a sunny day with the top warmer (1.0 up) below it. Every value in the band is below zero: under every load it will carry, the beam's ends still point up, and a level bearing is turned the same way for its whole life.

The angle made in the casting yard

A bridge bearing is designed for the rotation of the beam it carries, and the rotation is listed as a sum of load, temperature, creep and a tolerance. Followed through the life of a pretensioned beam, the largest term is none of those. It is the upward turn the prestress gives the beam's ends in the casting yard, before any bearing exists, and under every load the beam will ever carry its ends still point up.

deflection · End rotation The date the joint is cast decides the sign. The moment at the pier after thirty years, for two 12 m pretensioned beams, 300 mm wide and 700 mm deep with a 160 mm slab, made continuous over the pier by a joint cast with the slab, against the beams' age when the joint and slab are cast; sagging positive, with its three parts dashed. Cast at 7 days the joint ends at +320 kN·m; at 28, +214; at 90, +59; at a year, −164. It exceeds the joint's cracking moment of 159 kN·m for any joint cast before about 45 days, and it changes sign at about 130 days. From 7 days to a year the prestress's share falls from +555 to +204, because an old beam has made most of its upward creep before it is joined; the differential shrinkage's grows from −57 to −285, because an old beam has finished its own shrinking and the slab's is then all difference; the dead load's eases from −178 to −83. The first two move the joint the same way as the beams age.

The pier that bends the wrong way

Two precast beams are made continuous over a pier by a joint cast with the deck, and the joint is designed for the hogging moment a continuous beam has there. Thirty years later it is sagging, by more than the moment that cracks its underside, because the beams were still cambering upward when they were joined. Whether that happens is decided by two dates — when the beams were cast and when the joint was — and the deck's shrinkage, which pulls the other way, is not enough to stop it.

materials · Creep

Named alongside it

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

CreepNeutral axisServiceabilityStiffnessPrestressConstruction sequenceDeflectionDuctilityPlane sectionsSecond moment of areaShrinkageSuperposition

All concepts