Elastic Foundations - Beams - Materials - Engineering Reference with Worked Examples

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Engineering Materials Beams

Elastic Foundations
The deflection of beams where the foundations are not rigid.
Contents

Beams On Elastic Foundations.

1. Beams On Elastic

There are many problems in which a beam is supported on a compressible foundation which exerts a distributive reaction on the
Beam of intensity proportional to the compressibility.

Foundations.
2. (a) Long Beam Carrying A
Central Load.

In some cases the foundations can only exert upward forces and the beam may, if it is sufficiently long, lose contact with the
foundation. In other cases pressure may be exerted either way. Again the support may not be truly continuous( eg. the support of

3. (b) Short Beam Carrying A

Central Load W

railway lines) but can be replaced by an equivalent distributed support.

4. (c) An Infinite Beam Carrying

is the upward deflection of the foundation at any point, then the rate of upward reaction is -

If

A Load.
5. Page Comments

Using the theory shown in "Bending of Beams Part 1"

Or

A beam is a horizontal structural element

that is capable of withstanding load

(2)

primarily by resisting bending. The

bending force induced into the material of
the beam as a result of the external loads,

where

own weight, span and external reactions

Three standard are now considered:

to these loads is called a bending

moment.

(a) Long Beam Carrying A Central Load.

This example assumes that the foundations can only exert an upward force. The length of beam in contact with the foundations is
and the Origin

is at the left-hand end.

Elastic force is a force arising from the

deformation of a solid body which
depends only on the body's instantaneous

A solution to

can be written as:-

deformation and not on its previous

history, and which is conservative.

At
And
Also
Giving:

Thus,

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The equation is now reduced to:

At

The least solution of this is

which determines the length in contact with the ground. The value of the constant

obtained from the condition that the Shear Force at the centre is
either side of the load and it must change by an amount

is

since by symmetry it must be numerically the same on

on passing through the load.

Hence,

Or
The maximum Deflection and Bending Moment are at the centre,

Deflection is a term that is used to

(b) Short Beam Carrying A Central Load W

describe the degree to which a structural

element is displaced under a load.

If

in case (a) above, the Beam will sink below the unstressed level of the foundations at all points. Again taking the

origin at the left hand end and the overall length of the Beam as

, then the following conditions are obtained for the constants of

integration of the general solution shown in the previous paragraph.

At
And

And

At

And
Thus

Solving for

and

The complete solution for

is now known, the maximum deflection and Bending Moment occur under the load.

(c) An Infinite Beam Carrying A Load.

Assuming that the Support can exert pressure either upwards or downwards and taking the

axis through the load and the

axis at the undeformed level, a solution to equation (2) can be written in the form:

For the length to the right of

since

as

At

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And
Giving
And
The distance from the load at which

is given by:
(3)

And the least solution is

The maximum deflection and Bending Moment are at

Example - Example 1

[imperial]

Example:

Problem

A steel railway track is supported on timber sleepers which exert an equivalent load of 400lb./in. length of rail per inch
deflection from its unloaded position. For each rail

and

If a point load of 10 tons acts on each rail, find the length of rail over which the sleepers are depressed and the maximum
Bending Stress in the rail.
Workings

Each rail can be considered to be an infinitely long beam for which the length over which the downward deflection occurs is
given by equation (2)

And the Maximum Bending Moment is given by:

And the maximum Stress is:

Solution

The length is
The maximum Bending Stress in the rail is
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