For deep pier caps bearing heavy column reactions, why do building codes prescribe strut‑and‑tie models instead of linear beam theory?

Choices

• (A) Elastic Bernoulli theory always governs disturbed regions
• (B) Disturbed regions exhibit fanning compression struts and tie nets requiring STM equilibrium
• (C) Linear elasticity captures all diagonal cracking
• (D) Ignore diagonal cracks arbitrarily