Reference no: EM132375591
Numerical and Computing Skills - Problem Solving Assignment
General instructions - You will complete Tasks 1-3 as a team. You will complete Tasks 4-6 individually. The provided cover page must be used for your report.
Civil Engineering - Engineering Mechanics
The objectives of the project are:
1. Measure the reaction forces for the cases of point load and distributed load.
2. Develop a MATLAB program to calculate the reaction forces for the above 2 cases and verify the model using the measured data in the experiment.
3. Develop a MATLAB program to calculate the bending moment.
4. Apply the developed model for a balcony design.
Project Tasks -
Task 1: Measuring the reaction and analyse the data: (Weeks 4 and 5) (Table 1 can be used to record the raw data)
Point load
- Place one load at five different locations between the two scales and record the readings for each location.
- Place one load at 3 different locations on the cantilever (the section of the beam protruding out) and record your readings.
- Place two loads (one at the middle point between the two scales and the other one at the end of the cantilever) and record your readings.
Distributed load
- Place one uniform distributed load at any location between the two scales and record your readings
- Place one uniform distributed load at any location on the cantilever (the section of the beam protruding out) and record your readings.
- Place two uniform distributed loads (one at any location between the two scales and the other at the location on the cantilever) and record your readings.
- Place one distributed load at any location between the two scale and a point load at the end of the cantilever and record your reading.
Task 2: Develop a computing program (using Matlab) to calculate the reaction force (Weeks 4 - 6). The program must be able to:
- Accept inputs from a data file (such as an excel sheet, which contains the required input).
- Inputs include beam length, location of supports and the load(s) and their corresponding locations (x measured from the reference point '0' as shown in Figure 3 - attached). The program must be able to accept multiple arbitrary point and distributed loads placed at different locations as vectors.
- Calculate the resulting reactions at each support for point load and distributed load cases.
(Complete problem formulation before programming)
Task 3: Continue the program development (using Matlab) to calculate the shear and internal moments in the beam as a result of the external forces exerted on the beam (Weeks 4-11)
- Formulate the problem using the engineering knowledge/theory from 1501ENG and Equations (1-3) in the information sheet.
- Write Matlab program to calculate the shear and internal moments in the beam as a result of given external forces exerted on the beam.
- Use the developed program to calculate the shear and internal moments and present the results in figures for the following case, where AE =10 m, EG = 2 m, AB = 3 m, AD = 6 m, EF = 0.8 m, with 3 loads W1 = 100 kg (1.5 m long), W2 = 50 kg (point load), W3 = 45 kg.
- Label the maximum points (maximum shear value and location, maximum bending moment value and location)
Task 4: Calibration and error analysis (Weeks 5-11)
- Calculate the accuracy of your program by comparing your results for Task 2 to the measured data from Task 1.
- Compare the values of maximum shear and bending moment to the values you get from hand calculation.
Task 5: Complete a scientific report that address the tasks listed above. It must include:
- Introduction and problem statement
- Methods (include equations or problem formulation used in your program)
- Software algorithm design (include flow chart and code)
- Results and analysis (include the results of running your program with discussion/interpretation of the results as well as error analysis).
- Conclusions and recommendations
- Appendix - data collected from the experiments during weeks 4 & 5.
Attachment:- Numerical and Computing Skills Assignment Files.rar