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Defl ection of Beams
To facilitate the task of practicing engineers, most structural
and mechanical engineering handbooks include tables giving the
deflections and slopes of beams for various loadings and types of
support. Such a table will be found in Appendix D. We note that the
slope and deflection of the beam of Fig. 9.31 could have been deter-
mined from that table. Indeed, using the information given under
cases 5 and 6, we could have expressed the deflection of the beam
for any value x # Ly4. Taking the derivative of the expression
obtained in this way would have yielded the slope of the beam over
the same interval. We also note that the slope at both ends of the
beam can be obtained by simply adding the corresponding values
given in the table. However, the maximum deflection of the beam
of Fig. 9.31 cannot be obtained by adding the maximum deflections
of cases 5 and 6, since these deflections occur at different points of
the beam.†
9.8 APPLICATION OF SUPERPOSITION TO STATICALLY
INDETERMINATE BEAMS
We often find it convenient to use the method of superposition to
determine the reactions at the supports of a statically indeterminate
beam. Considering first the case of a beam indeterminate to the first
degree (cf. Sec. 9.5), such as the beam shown in Photo 9.3, we follow
the approach described in Sec. 2.9. We designate one of the reac-
tions as redundant and eliminate or modify accordingly the corre-
sponding support. The redundant reaction is then treated as an
unknown load that, together with the other loads, must produce
deformations that are compatible with the original supports. The
slope or deflection at the point where the support has been modified
or eliminated is obtained by computing separately the deformations
caused by the given loads and by the redundant reaction, and by
superposing the results obtained. Once the reactions at the supports
have been found, the slope and deflection can be determined in the
usual way at any other point of the beam.
†An approximate value of the maximum deflection of the beam can be obtained by plot-
ting the values of y corresponding to various values of x. The determination of the exact
location and magnitude of the maximum deflection would require setting equal to zero
the expression obtained for the slope of the beam and solving this equation for x.
Photo 9.3 The continuous beams supporting
this highway overpass have three supports and
are thus statically indeterminate.
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