Enhineyero - I was thinking the same, that the BS description of the method included just enough 'textbook' info to understand generally how it works. I think that's out of favour with code writers these days. I'd refer to Eurocode rather than BS8110 if using the method these days, because it is current.
Does ACI give plastic design requirements? Why are the end moments zero? Wouldn't they be the plastic capacity of the beam, or have I misunderstood?
Hturkak - I figured the 1/2000 factor in BS8110 was 1/(~200 * pi^2) as I didn't know what exactly concrete strain and steel stress were used for design and needs to be adjusted for cross-section dimension vs effective depth, but would be ~1/200. Pi^2 is for sinusoidal deflected shape, compared with your 8 for uniform curvature and 12 for triangular curvature. But how does the 'h' in the numerator fit in, and the (b')^2 in the denominator? For weak-axis bending, h/(b'^2) = 1/b' because h=b', and that's what we're after. But strong axis doesn't give the same result.