Shear design methods for prestressed concrete beams are becoming unnecessarily complicated because of the complex procedures to determine the concrete contribution, Vc Using a two-span l-beam and a single span box beam example bridge, it is shown that varying the Vc value from the simplest 1979 AASHTO Interim method of calculating Vc to the most complicated AASHTO LRFD iteration procedure changes the cost of the beam by not more than 1 percent.
