Deflection of Beams and Cantilevers (Next Generation Structures)

One of a range of experiment modules that fit to the Structures platform (STS1, available separately), this product helps students to understand the elastic properties of beams and cantilevers. Students choose from a selection of test beams and fi t them to supports.

They may choose to fit the beams to one support only, forming a cantilever. They may also fit them between two supports with different fixing methods, forming simply supported and fixed or ‘encastre’ beams. Each support includes pointers that work with the scale on the platform for accurate positioning.

Students apply loads to any position along the beam and measure the resulting defl ection, also at any point along the beam. They use textbook beam equations to predict the defl ection for any given load and compare the calculated results with the measured results. This helps confi rm the reliability of the textbook equations and the accuracy of the experiment results.

This product includes a set of beam ‘specimens’ of different metals and cross-section for comparison of the elastic properties and ‘I’ value. It also allows the student to vary the eff ective length of the beam to see how this affects the magnitude of deflection for any given load.

The defl ection indicator has its own display, but it can connect to the USB interface hub of the Structures platform for computer display and data acquisition.