Investigating a Cantilever

A cantilever studying a cantilever is a beam with only one end fixed. They are commonly used in daily life structures like cranes, diving boards and football stadiums. The factors that affect the deflection of the cantilever are mass, length, and load. Three forces, the weight of the cantilever and the gravity acting on the load, the compressive force acting on the lower surface of the cantilever, and the tension acting on the upper surface of the cantilever, affect the deflection of the cantilever.

The beam deflection test is aimed at investigating the structural rigidity of a cantilever made of steel and aluminum. One end of the cantilever is fixed and supports the applied load over its entire length. Cantilever beams have various uses such as bridges, balconies, storage shelves, aircraft wings, sidewalks, diving boards, and even bicycles. Figure 1 shows an example of a cantilever beam in a bridge design. The main purpose of this experiment was to find the structural rigidity of the two cantilever beams made of aluminum and steel. In the first part of the experiment, we applied various known loads to the same distance from the fixed end of each beam. In the second part of the experiment there are point loads of different lengths. Since the structural rigidity is largely dependent on the size, the thickness and cross-sectional area of ​​the two beams must be approximately the same.

The main purpose of this experiment is to determine the structural rigidity of the two cantilever beams made of steel and aluminum while keeping the thickness and cross section of the two beams constant. Experiments also examined the relationship between material properties and dimensions and structural rigidity. The experiment is divided into two sections. The result of the first part of the experiment was obtained by clamping the beam at one end and then applying different masses of a specific length across the beam by measuring the deflection. The measuring device is arranged at a specific distance from the clamping end. For steel beams and aluminum beams, the following procedure is used. In the second part of the experiment it was necessary to place a single known mass of different length on the support beam and then measure the resulting deflection. This method is performed only for steel beams.

The experiments were conducted at the campus laboratory. The place where the experiment was started was to test the deflection of the two cantilever beams using TecQuipment's deflected beam and a cantilever device. The beams have the same shape, but they are made of two different metals. One is steel and the other is aluminum. Tighten the beam to the fixture of the equipment and tighten the fastener screw with a hexagonal wrench to fix it. After attaching the beam to the instrument, click the Origin button and calibrate the Mitutoyo absolute displacement gauge. Next, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment we tested the deflection of each metal by changing the mass while keeping the load constant. In the second experiment we use a constant mass test deflection while changing the distance of the load from the fixed end of the beam.