Assessed Report 1
H21SEM: Structural and Engineering Mechanics
Deflections of Beams and Cantilevers
To be completed by student
Student Name
Jian ZHU
Student ID
6509832
Date of experiment
22 October 2012
Date submitted
4 November 2012
Office use only
Grade awarded
Penalty
Final grade
Markers Signature
Contents
Summary……………………………………………………………………………………3
Introduction & Theory……………………………………………………………………4-6
Apparatus…………………………………………………………………………………..7-8
Procedure…………………………………………………………………………………9-11
Results & Calculations…………………………………………………………………12-19
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………..20
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..21
Summary
beams which are made of three different materials: brass, aluminium and steel are used to conduct these four experiments. The methods of controlling of variables and plotting approximate functions of the researched variables, as well as some basic physical knowledge, are used to finding the properties of the beams. In experiment of the deflection of cantilever, different loads were applied respectively on the cantilevers and the deflections corresponding to the loads were obtained with the help of the digital dial test indicator. For exploring the relationship between the length and the deflection of a beam in experiment 2, the distance of two supports were changed with a constant load imposed. The experiment 3 indicated how the deflection of a loaded beam varies with span by means of comparing the reading of digital dial indicator before and after the loading. The final experiment loads were applied at the end of a beam in order to induce a moment so that circular bending was produced. Meanwhile these steps also invoked a method of accurately determining the Young’s modulus of the material experimented with. Eventually, different specimen materials were used to conduct repeat experiments and the graphs versus relative variables were...