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How Moment of Inertia Works
How Moment of Inertia Works
Beams are in every home and in one sense are quite simple.
You put weight on them and they bend but don’t break.
We said earlier that the fibers that are farther from the
neutral axis have a larger effect on the beams ability to
resist bending and it turns out that they have an effect
proportional to the square of their distance from the
neutral axis.
The area of the rectangular slice is b * dx and it is a distance of x from the neutral axis. (note that dx just means a “little
bit of x”)
𝒅
(1) 𝑰 = 𝟐 ∫𝟎𝟐 𝒃𝒙𝟐 𝒅𝒙 … this adds up all the rectangular slices above the neutral axis and the coefficient of 2 doubles it
to include the bottom.
𝒃𝒙𝟑 𝑑
(2) 𝑰=𝟐 𝟑
… which must be evaluated at x = 2
𝒃𝒅𝟑
(3) 𝑰= this is the commonly used moment of inertia formula
𝟏𝟐
This simple algebra formula numerically expresses a beams ability to resist bending and notice that the height of the
beam has a cubed effect on its strength when compared to the width. Hence a beam laid on its side will bend more than
when stood vertically.
See the page on how beam deflection works … moment of inertia is one variable in the deflection equation.
Also notice moment of inertia is listed in the Versa-lam design chart and now you can find it for yourself: