The force T causes transverse stresses in the concrete, which may cause cracking.The transverse tensile stresses are distributed as shown by the curved line in Fig. 17-5c.Analyses by Adebar and Zhou [17-9] suggest that the tensile stress distributions at thetwo ends of a strut are completely separate when &/ a exceeds about 3.5 and overlap com-pletely when e/a is between 1.5 and 2. Assuming a parabolic distribution of transverse