×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Very thin and short members in bending (flexure)

Very thin and short members in bending (flexure)

Very thin and short members in bending (flexure)

(OP)
I am working with .005" thick spring steel.  I have a 1-inch wide piece clamped at both ends so only .015" are exposed to bending. I am interested in stresses due to bending.  A standard beam bending analysis approach wont work due to large deflections and short length.  Anyone have any input.

RE: Very thin and short members in bending (flexure)

It depends on how the bending loads are applied. The fact that the beam is short may or may not matter. If you just have a pure bending moment all along your beam, the standard beam equation will work fine. If the material behaves linearly, there is no reason why the "large deflections" should matter. If it's spring steel, the strain will be small. If you are applying a transverse load, however, you will develop shear stresses, and you must obviously consider these in addition to the direct stresses produced by bending. The deflection will then also not be the same as the standard beam deflection equation. The shorter the beam, the more the additional shear deflection will dominate the bending deflection. See Timoshenko - strength of Materials Vol 1. I can't tell how you are loading the spring from your description, so its not clear which of Timoshenko's various cases will apply, if any. If I had to guess, I would say it looks as though you are using the spring steel as a frictionless pivot, with a long lever arm, and so the shear stress may be very low, in which case you could just use the standard bending equation.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources