This paper is concerned with an experimental investigation of the bending stresses in a bar subjected to eccentric longitudinal impact. The test beam was a round steel bar, 1 in. in diam and 8 ft long which was suspended by wires at two points. Strains were measured by SR-4 strain gages at 18 stations along the bar. The signals were fed through an amplifier to an oscilloscope and the trace on the screen was photographed for a permanent record. The impact was obtained by means of a striking bar with a conical end. The striking bar was suspended in a pendulum rig and striking height adjusted so as to impact the test bar at any desired eccentricity. The dimensionless impact duration
t/T
1 is about 0.02, where
T
1 denotes the fundamental period of the beam.
A theoretical analysis of the response of a free-free beam subjected to a dynamically applied end moment is undertaken to correlate analytical theories with the experimental results. The theoretical results based on the Timoshenko theory were found numerically, using the method of characteristics. Good agreement is found for the moment response curves at ten representative beam stations. Comparison is also made with related results from the Bernoulli-Euler theory, using the normalmode method. The numerical calculations were carried out on both IBM 704 and IBM 650 digital computers.
Paper was presented at 1960 SESA Spring Meeting held in Indianapolis on May 18–20