Many designers actually proportion shear rods for shear, shear in the
steel at units of 10,000 or 12,000 lb. per sq. in.; and the blame for
this dangerous practice can be laid directly to the literature on
reinforced concrete. Shear rods are given as standard features in the
design of reinforced concrete beams. In the Joint Report of the
Committee of the various engineering societies, a method for
proportioning shear members is given. The stress, or shear per shear
member, is the longitudinal shear which would occur in the space from
member to member. No hint is given as to whether these bars are in shear
or tension; in fact, either would be absurd and impossible without
greatly overstressing some other part. This is just a sample of the
state of the literature on this important subject. Shear bars will be
taken up more fully in subsequent paragraphs.

The fifth point concerns vertical stirrups in a beam. These stirrups are
conspicuous features in the designs of reinforcing concrete beams.
Explanations of how they act are conspicuous in the literature on
reinforced concrete by its total absence. By stirrups are meant the
so-called shear rods strung along a reinforcing rod. They are usually
U-shaped and looped around the rod.

It is a common practice to count these stirrups in the shear, taking the
horizontal shear in a beam. In a plate girder, the rivets connecting the
flange to the web take the horizontal shear or the increment to the
flange stress. Compare two 3/4-in. rivets tightly driven into holes in a
steel angle, with a loose vertical rod, 3/4 in. in diameter, looped
around a reinforcing rod in a concrete beam, and a correct comparison of
methods of design in steel and reinforced concrete, as they are commonly
practiced, is obtained.