TABLE OF CONTENTS Beams are important fundamental structural and/or machine elements; they are found in buildings and in bridges. Beams are also used as shafts in cars and trains, as wings in aircrafts and bookshelves in bookstores. Arms and femurs of human beings and branches of trees are good examples of portions of living creatures which support their bodies. Beams play important roles not only in inorganic but also in organic structures.
Mechanics of beams is one of the most important subjects in engineering.
Perform an finite-element method (FEM) analysis of a 2-D cantilever beam shown in Figure 3.3 below and calculate the deflection of the beam at the loading point and the longitudinal stress distribution in the beam.
Geometry: length / = 90mm, height h=5 mm, thickness b =10mm Material: mild steel having Young's modulus E =210 GPa and Poisson's ratio v =0.3. Boundary conditions: The beam is clamped to a rigid wall at the left end and loaded at x =80 mm by a point load of P =100 N.
Before proceeding to the FEM analysis of the beam, let us review the solutions to the example...
