COE 3001 Lecture 14: 14+Bending+Stresses

• School: Georgia Tech
• Department: College of Engineering
• Course: COE 3001
• Professor: Thomas Susan

Document Summary

So far, we have talked only about the shear forces and bending moments generated in beams during different loading conditions. What we are really interested in, however, are the normal and shear stresses in beams. To help us arrive at equations for stress and strain in a beam, we need to define the curvature of the beam. Understanding curvature and developing a mathematical language for it is crucial, because the curvature of the beam helps us get at the strains and stresses in the beam. We will start with a basic cantilever beam subjected to an upward load f at the free end: The beam deflects under load, creating a deflection curve. The deflection of a beam is the displacement of any point on that beam from its original position, measured in the y-direction only. We choose two arbitrary points m1 and m2 on the curve, separated by a very small distance ds on the deflection curve itself.