If instead, the planks are glued together, the glue will prevent the beams from sliding past each other. If they are not bound together, applying a load to the free end of the beams will cause them to bend and slide past each other, as shown in the illustration below. Pretend they are 2' by 4' planks of wood. Consider several beams that are cantilevered to a wall. Transverse shear can be a difficult thing to visualize. In this lesson, we will learn how the shear force in beam bending causes a shear stress. This normal stress often dominates the design criteria for beam strength, but as beams become short and thick, a transverse shear stress becomes dominate. In a previous lesson, we have learned about how a bending moment causes a normal stress. As we learned while creating shear and moment diagrams, there is a shear force and a bending moment acting along the length of a beam experiencing a transverse load.