Re: [ATM] Bending a bar

["Robert Houdart" <robert.houdart@cruxis.be>]

Michael,

> Well, it's sort of nebulous ideas at this point, but basically it
boils
> down to using one or more slats of wood (think 1/4" plywood) or
similar
> material as support for a load that's constrained to move vertically.
> The plywood "beam" (or column, I guess it is technically) is rigidly
> attached at both ends. For a given load and allowable amount of
> deflection I want to find out how thick a piece of plywood I need, or
if
> I need to use something more rigid like aluminum.

For buckling there is no deflection criterion, only a force criterion to
decide whether your column is good enough.

For small, centered loads there will be no lateral deflection at all.
Only when the load exceeds the Euler limit, your column will be
submitted to buckling and in most cases will fail. You should probably
steer away from this scenario with a comfortable safety margin.

Aluminum is not necessarily a better choice than plywood. Equally
important are the section properties. A good reference with relevant
formulae is the following:
www.mitcalc.com/doc/buckling/help/en/bucklingtxt.htm .

If you need some help with a concrete example, just post the numbers and
I'll help you through the math.

Robert
www.cruxis.com/scope/scope1100.htm

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