Referring only to I-beams or H-beams here. That means only beams that come in the general “H” shape.
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I would love some simple explanations of how strong various types and sizes of beams are – going beyond the numbers. Anything to make it easier to conceptualize their strength.
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Obviously steel and aluminum have different material strengths, so I welcome specific examples for the different types of metal.
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There are a lot of different kinds of I beams but for this example to have the most obvious variance let’s use the lightest standard of universal beam, called a 150ub14 which means that it’s 150mm tall and weighs 14kg per meter of length (for steel).
Let’s imagine that this beam is bridging a gap 5 meters across and we have a normal sized female African elephant, weighing 3000kg who has been trained to be able to walk across our 75mm wide beam – and I guess let’s imagine she can do it upright on her hind feet so that all of her weight can be in the very middle of the beam at some point.
If this beam were made out of steel, when she was standing in the center of it it would “droop” (deflect) about 57mm. If the beam were made of aluminum it would deflect about 168.5mm and, for reference if it were made of pine wood it would deflect 1235.75mm.
While I don’t have the numbers in front of me, I feel comfortable saying that is enough deflection to cause failure, the wood I beam would break and our elephant would fall – but don’t worry, in our imaginary example there’s an elephant sized crash pad under it and she’s very flexible for an elephant. A stunt elephant.
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