Industrial Units, Hassocks Wood, Basingstoke

Shear resistance of bend-up bars There has been quite a response to Mr Porter’s query (July) regarding the apparent anomaly in the concrete Code, in that it appears to make the shear resistance Vb, independent of the bend-up bar spacing Sb. Verulam

Keith White will succeed Professor Edmund Happold, FEng, as President of the Institution 1987-1988 at an Ordinary Meeting at Institution headquarters on 1 October 1987. The handover ceremony begins at 6.oopm, when Mr White will give his Presidential Address ‘The Institution today and tomorrow?’, the full text of which will be published in The Structural Engineer in November.

It is suggested that the use of reinforced concrete based on scientific analysis began in the decade 1875-1885. Before that, the medium had been used intuitively, for about 30 years, with a wide range of cements. This use in its turn had developed from the need to provide structural iron with nonstructural fireproof encasement. From 1885 to 1910 there was a rapidIy increasing perception of the behaviour and potential of reinforced concrete. The paper foIIows the emergence of this new building medium, from the middle of the 18th century, when the intimately-bonded combination of metal and concrete of any form held no meaning in building, to 1910 when it had become universally known and was being used much in the manner accepted today and in most of the form now employed. Professor John W. de Courcy