Appendix A: Beam Bending and Deflection Formulas
A.1 WHY SHOULD A BEAM BEND?
Consider a beam of length L resting between two walls A and B and carrying a heavy weight W, as shown in Fig. A.1(a). The beam bends. In fact it has to bend, however small that may be, and the amount of bending is proportinal to the weight W it carries. What causes it to bend?
FIGURE A.1 Explaining beam bending.
To explain bending of a beam we shall first consider the free body diagram shown in Fig. A.1(b). The weight is represented by an arrow marked W. The beam is carrying not only the weight W but also its own weight w. The walls on which the beam is resting ...
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