The definition in the manual for the Cover to CGS is "the distance from the top of the slab to the bottom of the top bar". This will be the bottom of TOP bar or TOPTOP bar? What I've found is that, this value greatly affects the result of punching shear. It could go from an over-designed column to very much under-designed column by just changing this distance from bottom of TOP bar to TOPTOP bar.
Thank you very much!
For most design codes, the effective depth for punching shear is taken as the average of distances from the compression most fiber to centroid of tension reinforcements in both orthogonal direction. If you the design code that you are using does not define the effective depth for punching shear explicitly and you have doubts on how to calculate it, I would use the value that leads to the most conservative design result.
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