STRAIGHT BEAM EXPERIMENT

Objective
To determine the reaction force in the straight beam from a bending test of tested
specimen.

Apparatus
A support frame, reaction support pier, load hangers, beam specimen, a meter ruler
to measure the span of the beam and a set of weights.

Theory
Load arrangements for the beam as shown below.

W
L1 L2

Simply Supported Beam

Procedure
1. The display unit need to switch on to warm up the unit.

2. We choose our beam configuration

3. The reaction piers were clamped to the support frame using the plate and bolt
supplied with the apparatus and at predetermine distance between the
supports.

4. We place the beam specimen between the two cylindrical pieces of each
support. By using our fingers, we tightened the screws at top of each support.

5. The load hanger was fix at the position where the beam is to be loaded.

6. We connected the load cell from the support pier to display the unit, each load
cell occupying one terminal on the display.

7. We start the experiment with channel 1 record the initial reading for each
channel.

8. A suitable load was place on the load hanger and we note the reading for
each load cell. This represents the reaction at each pier.

9. We choose another loading arrangement and recorded the pier reaction.