The dimensions of a bearing structure tend to be designed as slender as possible to ensure aesthetics and to save material, which makes the structure more susceptible to damage caused by shear forces. When the structure is subjected to an earthquake, the shear failure is even the primary mode of failure. Research on shear stress has always been of great interest to scientists. This paper presents an efficient method for the assessment of the shear stress for prismatic beams with arbitrary cross-section. The numerical method implemented in a MATLAB environment is validated by analyzing five examples. The study shows the efficiency and reliability of the numerical method, which allows for more precise analysis and design of cross-sections. Therefore, significant savings of material can be reached, which will have a positive impact on our environment and which can help sustainable growth.

Determining the shear stress of a structural element caused by torsion is a vital problem. The analytical solution of the Saint-Venant torsion is only suitable for simple cross-sections. The numerical method to evaluate the shear stress of complicated cross-sections is indispensable. Many numerical methods have been studied by scientists. Among these studies, Gruttmann proposed an excellent numerical method, which inherited the Saint-Venant theory. However, the use of isoparametric four-noded quadrilateral elements made the method not to reach the best optimization. The objective of this paper is to improve Gruttmann‘s method by using isoparametric eight-noded quadrilateral elements. MATLAB is the language for programming the numerical method. The validated examples have demonstrated that the author’s numerical method is more effective than Gruttmann‘s method.

In practice, the slab foundation is used widely in civil engineering. Besides the concrete material, fiber concrete is applied more popular in the slab foundations. Determining the ultimate load of the slab foundations is a complex problem due to the relation of the soil-structure interaction (SSI) problem, which depends on both the structures and the subsoil characteristics. ANSYS is a finite element software which is a reliable and effective technique to simulate the structure model. This paper aims to determine the ultimate load of the fiber-reinforced concrete slab on the ground subjected to the concentrated load by ANSYS software. The nonlinear material of the structure and the subsoil will be considered in this work. The validation test of the numerical model will be through the experiment data. This study has shown that the numerical model is reliable for the structure design.

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