8.

3 Strain energy

1. When a load of 100 N is hung at the end of a long thin wire of diameter 0.8 mm and of length
50.0 cm, the extension produced is 2.0 cm.
a) What is the stress on the wire?
b) What is the strain in the wire?
c) What is the Young modulus?

2. A steel cable of diameter 2.0 cm and length 10 m is used on a crane to raise a load of 1200 kg,
the Young’s modulus of the steel is 2.0 × 1011 Pa. What is the strain energy of the steel cable?

3. A support cable on a bridge has an area of cross-section of 0.0085 m2 and a length 40 m. It is

made of high tensile steel whose Young modulus is 2.8 x 1011 Pa. The tension in the cable is
750 kN.
(i) Calculate the extension of the cable.
(ii) Calculate the strain energy stored in the cable.

4. A specimen fibre of glass and a specimen of copper wire has, the same dimensions. The
length of each specimen is 1.60 m and the radius of each is 0.18 mm. Force-extension graphs
for both specimens are shown in figure below.

(a)
(i) Which of the two materials is brittle?
(ii) Explain using the feature of the graph that leads you to the answer in (i).
(b) Using the graphs and the data given, determine:
(i) The area of the cross-section of the specimens.
(ii) The Young modulus of the glass.
(iii) The ultimate tensile stress for copper.
 5.
(a) A copper wire and fibre glass of the same dimension are each suspended from a retort stand.
Each of them is then slowly stretched by adding load to their free ends until they break.
I. On the same axes, sketch graphs of stress against strain to show the two materials.
II. From your graphs in (a)(i), state three different characteristics of the materials.
(b) A copper wire with initial length of 0.755 m and cross-sectional area of 3.75 × 10−7 m2 is
stretched until the strain in the wire is 0.015.
[Young’s Modulus of copper is 1.30 × 1011 Pa.]
(i) Calculate the force applied.
(ii) Calculate the strain energy in the wire.
(iii) If the cross-sectional area of the wire changes but the volume remains the same, determine
the fractional change in cross-sectional area of the wire.

6. Two wires of diameter 0.25 cm, one made of steel and the other made of brass are loaded as
shown in the right. The unloaded length of steel wire is 1.5 m and that of brass wire is 1.0 m.
Compute the elongations of the steel and the brass wires.
Young’s modulus of steel = 2.0 x 1011Pa
Young’s modulus of steel = 0.91 x 1011Pa