HW.4.

Prob-11.5-8. Beam AD and wire CB in the sketch are made of the same material, whose yield stress
is . The beam has a square cross section, units on a side. What should be the diameter of the
wire, in terms of and . If two collapse mechanisms are to be equally likely?

The beam is statically indeterminate to the first

degree. In order to create a mechanism, two degrees
of freedom should be removed. Yielding of the CB
wire, and plastic hinges either at point A or at B are
possible alternatives.

We consider two plausible mechanisms as follows,

and apply the virtual work argument in order.
In the first mechanism, wire CB yields and there is a
frictional hinge at point A. Here, is the radius of the
wire.

In the second mechanism, a plastic hinge at point B is

enough to create a partial collapse and the BD section of
the beam won’t carry load any more. Also, wire load
does no work.

Since it is mentioned in the problem that these two mechanisms occurs at the same time, the collapse
loads should be equal.

The beam has square cross section, units on a side and the material of the wire and the beam are
same, yield stress of the beam is also . From Eq.11.3-2, we can calculate the fully plastic
moment value for the beam.

If we substitute this expression in the above equation.