Lecture 12: The Second Moment of Area

Biol427 Autumn 2013 Biomechanics 21 Oct 2013

In previous lectures, we have focused our attentions on how materials respond to purely tensile or purely compressive loads. In todays lecture, we will discuss how structure inuences the distribution of stress and strain under a more complicated loading situation: bending.

Flexural stiffness (EI)

So far, we have limited our discussion of structural mechanics to structures loaded in pure tension or compression, as shown in Fig 1. In these special cases, assuming a homogeneous and isotropic material, the stress at any point in the structure is approximately equal.

Figure 1: A beam xed at one end, subject to compressive (left) and tensile (right) loads.

However, these are clearly not the only ways in which a structure can be loaded, and indeed for many biological structures purely tensile or purely compressive loads are rare. Exercise: Consider the example of beam bending, as shown in Figure 2. Are the stresses within this beam tensile or compressive?
Figure 2: Beam bending. Draw in the distribution of stresses on this diagram, given the indicated load.

lecture 12 : the second moment of area

For a beam with a given cross-sectional area A, the amount that that beam will bend under an applied load F will be determined in part, as we might expect, by the stiffness of the material of the beam (E), but also upon the structure of that beam, and how the material of the beam is arranged in cross section. We represent this distribution of material in the cross section of the beam as the second moment of area ( I ), and the product of the material stiffness and the second moment of area for a beam (EI ) is termed the exural stiffness.

The second moment of area

The second moment of area is dened as I= y2 dA (1)

where dA is a thin section of the area taken as a slice parallel to the neutral axis, and y is the distance separating that slice from the neutral axis. As an example, consider the cross section of a beam shown in Fig 3, roughly modeled after the cross-section of a coconut palm petiole. We can measure the second moment of area I for this cross section by taking thin slices of the cross sectional area (dA) and computing the sum of the areas of these sections multiplied by y2 , where y is the distance from that slice of the cross-section from the neutral axis of the beam.

Figure 3: Cross-section of a palm petiole, showing the neutral axis of the beam under an applied vertical load, and a thin region of cross section dA parallel to the neutral axis displaced by a distance y

Figure 4: Compute the second moment of area for these two beams, under loads F1 and F2. The neutral axes of the beams for these loads are given.

Exercise: Figure 4 shows the cross-sections of two different beams, subjected to both horizontal and vertical loads. Compute the second

lecture 12 : the second moment of area

moment of area for each beam under each loading regime. Assume that each block is 2 2 cm. For some common shapes, it is possible to analytically determine I given the cross-section Table 1 collects some common shapes and gives formulae for determining their cross-sectional areas and second moment of area. Shape Area I
Table 1: Some common beam crosssectional shapes and their second moments of area

wh

wh3 12

r2

r4 4

ab

a3 b 4

2 r2 ) (r o i

4 r 4 ) (r o i 4

bh 2

bh3 36

Beam bending
Now that we understand the second moment of area, lets return to the problem of beam bending. To determine how stress is distributed within an end-loaded cantilever beam, as shown in Figure 5, we need to derive a general equation for the stress and strain at some arbitrary location (x, y), as shown in Fig 5. For a simple beam, where the cross-section is symmetrical about the neutral axis, the Euler-Bernoulli equation tells us that the stress
Figure 5: Stress distribution in an end-loaded cantilever beam.

lecture 12 : the second moment of area

within a beam subject to an external load is given by = My I (2)

where y is the distance from the neutral axis to the point of interest, I is the second moment of area of the beam, and M is the moment applied to the beam at that point. When we are looking at a force F applied at the end of the beam (which we will call x = 0), the moment M caused by this force at a distance x away from the force is given by M = Fx, and so we can rewrite Eqn 2 as Fxy = (3) I This gives us the stress distribution within beam; if we are instead interested in the strain, we can use our knowledge that = E to give us: Fxy = (4) EI which tells us, for a load F applied to a beam with second moment of area I and stiffness E, the strain experienced by that beam under load at any arbitrary point within the beam ( x, y)! Once we know the strain at all points in the beam, we can use this information to calculate the expected deection of the beam under an applied load. For an end-loaded beam, the deection ymax of the end of the beam is given by Fl 3 ymax = (5) 3EI where l is the length of the beam. If instead of being applied only at the end of the beam, F is applied uniformly along the length of the beam, the deection of the end of the beam is given by ymax = Fl 3 8EI (6)

Exercise: Go back to the beams shown in Fig 4. If these beams are made of wood (E 10 GPa) and are 1 m long, how much would these beams deect under an applied load of 100 kg? Bonus Points: If the strength of wood is 100 MPa in tension and 50 MPa in compression, what is the largest mass that these beams could support without breaking?