Title: Landmark Series: Continuity as a Factor in Reinforced Concrete Design, Part 3

Author(s): Hardy Cross

Publication: Concrete International

Volume: 25

Issue: 5

Appears on pages(s): 35-48

Keywords:

DOI:

Date: 5/1/2003

Abstract:
Continued from April 2003. At a time when the Anti-Cross is incessantly, insistently with us in easily accessible software, when quantity of result masquerades as quality, all structural engineers owe it to their craft to read and re-read Cross. The chapters on "Statics of Deflected Structures" and "Geometry of Deflected Structures" in the book Continuous Frames of Reinforced Concrete by Cross and N. D. Morgan deserve study each and every time one uses any systems software for structural analysis. In this final installment of Cross’ continuity paper (originally published in 1929), note especially the two short paragraphs on "Slabs." In one brilliant stroke, Cross captures the essence of design for flexure: "Tools available to the average engineer in thinking about slabs are the limitations imposed by statics upon the total moments, principles of symmetry and asymmetry, and mental pictures of the deflected slab as a means of judging the variation of the moments along any given section."