MODY UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, LAKSHMANGARH

Faculty of Engineering & Technology

Mechanical Engineering Department
Autumn 2014-15

Mody University QLM

ME 203 Strength of material
Group Assignments
These assignments are designed to assess your critical thinking, problem solving, and
communication skills. You have to apply the knowledge of principles and laws of mechanics
on deformable bodies, behaviour of solid objects (one and two dimensional members of
structures) and material strength used in structural members to the following set of problems.
The study of strength of materials often refers to various methods of calculating the stresses
and strains in structural members, such as beams, columns, and shafts. The methods
employed to predict the response of a structure under loading and its susceptibility to various
failure modes takes into account the properties of the materials such as its yield strength,
ultimate strength, Young's modulus, and Poisson's ratio.
Your answer will be judged for its clarity, relevance, coherence, logic, depth, and fairness.
Students have to follow below problem-solving methodology which helps you to develop
your problem-solving skill.

Road map: provides some of the general objectives of the problem and develops a strategy for
how the solution will be developed.
Modeling: a real-life problem is idealized by a model i.e. the selection of the laws/ principles
needed to solve the problem.
Equations: writing all the equations needed to solve the problem.
Computation: solve the equations.
Discussion: the solution is interrogated to ensure that it is meaningful and accurate.

Problems on Simple Stresses and strain

1. A gondola on a ski lift is supported
by two bent arms, as shown in the
figure. Each arm is offset by the
distance b=180 mm from the line
of action of the weight force W.
The allowable stresses in the arms
are 100 MPa in tension and 50 MPa
in shear. If the loaded gondola
weighs 12 kN, what is the
minimum diameter d of the arms?

2. Determine the maximum tensile,

compressive, and shear stresses at
point A on the bicycle pedal crank
shown in the figure. The pedal and
crank are in a horizontal plane and
point A is located on the top of the
crank. The load P=160 N acts in
the vertical direction and the
distances (in the horizontal plane)
between the line of action of the
load and point A are b1=5.0 in. and
b2=2.5 in. Assume that the crank
has a solid circular cross section
with diameter d =0.6 in.
Problems on Analysis of Stress and Strain
1. The stresses acting on element A in
the web of a train rail are found to
be 42 MPa tension in the horizontal
direction and 140 MPa compression
in the vertical direction (see figure).
Also, shear stresses of magnitude 60
MPa act in the directions shown.
Determine the stresses acting on an
element oriented at a counter
clockwise angle of 48 from the
horizontal. Show these stresses on a
sketch of an element oriented at this
angle.

Problems on SFD & BMD

1. A simple beam AB supports two
connected wheel loads P and 2P
that are distance d apart (see
figure). The wheels may be placed
at any distance x from the left-hand
support of the beam.
(a) Determine the distance x that
will produce the maximum shear
force in the beam,
and also
determine the maximum shear force Vmax.
(b) Determine the distance x that will produce the maximum bending moment in the
beam, and also draw the corresponding bending-moment diagram. (Assume P=10 kN,
d=2.4 m, and L=12 m.).

2. A beam ABCD with a vertical arm

CE is supported as a simple beam at
A and D (see figure). A cable passes
over a small pulley that is attached
to the arm at E. One end of the
cable is attached to the beam at
point B. The tensile force in the
cable is 1800 N. Draw the shearforce
and
bending-moment
diagrams for beam ABCD. (Note:
Disregard the widths of the beam
and vertical arm and use centre line
dimensions when making calculations.)
Problems on bending stress in beams
1. The thin-walled cantilever beam is formed by gluing the two 8-in. by 2-in. angles to
the 10-in.-wide plate. Assume that t is much smaller than the other dimensions of the
cross section. (a) Determine the smallest thickness t if the working bending stress is
8000 psi. (b) Find the required shear strength in the glue.

2. A seesaw weighing 3 lb/ft of length is

occupied by two children, each
weighing 90 lb (see figure). The
center of gravity of each child is 8 ft
from the fulcrum. The board is 19 ft
long, 8 in. wide, and 1.5 in. thick.
What is the maximum bending stress
in the board?
3. Each girder of the lift bridge (see
figure) is 180 ft long and simply
supported at the ends. The design
load for each girder is a uniform
load of intensity 1.6 k/ft. The
girders are fabricated by welding
three steel plates so as to form an

I-shaped cross section (see figure) having section modulus S=3600 in3. What is the
maximum bending stress max in a girder due to the uniform load?
Problems on Deflection of beams
1. A cantilever beam AB of length L=6 ft is constructed of a W 8x21 wide-flange section
(see figure). A weight W
=1500 lb falls through a
height h=0.25 in. onto the end
of the beam. Calculate the
maximum deflection max of
the end of the beam and the
maximum bending stress max
due to the falling weight.
(Assume E=30x106 psi.)