Neel Nadpara

10/04/15
Intro to Sensors and Data: Lab 2

Abstract:
The purpose of this lab was to utilize the stain gauge that we validated in our pervious class to
allow us to determine the Young’s modulus of the beam that we affixed our strain gauge to.

Introduction:
The Young’s modulus is a mechanical property of any material in its linear elastic range. In
essence, Young’s Modulus provides a measure of the stiffness of a material (the force per unit
area needed to stretch a material). As a solid body is deformed as a load is applied, there is an
elastic region in which the material will return to its original state when the load is removed.
Thus, in this lab we intended to deform a steel beam elastically and used the strain generated
by the strain gauge to calculate the Young’s Modulus. A strain gage is made of a looped wire
that is embedded in a thin backing with two copper coated tabs that serve as solder points for
the leads. In order to measure deformation of a certain structure, the strain gauge is attached
to the beam and as it is deformed the wire within the strain gauge stretches and the electrical
resistance changes. Employing a Wheatstone bridge setup, the change in voltage based on the
change in resistance can be found allowing one to determine the strain, ε, which can then be
used to calculate the Young’s modulus.

Setup:
The experiment is set up with what appears to be a 1018 Steel cantilever beam as the test
specimen. The beam was clamped using a c-clamp to the table with a spacer with the beam
hanging off the table. Afterwards, different loads of P were each applied at five separate
locations on the beam after the position of the strain gauge at distances XLoad away from the
edge of the c-clamp. This process was done with five different loads being applied to the beam
in the various different positions and the strains were calculated. Also, in order to ensure that
the beam was never plastically deformed we kept the strain under 600 µ-strain. Also, since the
load was applied using weights and rubber bands to secure them onto the beam at the
different positions we made sure that the oscillation of the weight was kept to a minimum as to
not affect our results.
Figure 1: Experimental Setup w/Variables including a Cross Sectional View Including the Width
of Beam

Figure 2: FBD with Internal Forces (the position and magnitude of the load, P, changes)

Derivation:
𝑴𝒚
𝝐=
𝑬𝑰
𝑴𝒚
𝑬=
𝝐𝑰
𝑴 = 𝑷(𝑿𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅 − 𝑿𝒈𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒆 )

𝒃𝒉𝟑
𝑰= , 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒉 = 𝟐𝒚
𝟏𝟐
[𝑷(𝑿𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅 − 𝑿𝒈𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒆 )]𝒚
𝑬=
𝒃(𝟐𝒚)𝟑
𝑬 [ 𝟏𝟐 ]

𝟑 𝑷 𝟏
𝑬 = [( ) ( 𝟐 ) ( )] (𝑿𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅 − 𝑿𝒈𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒆 )
𝟐 𝒃𝒚 𝝐
𝟑 𝒎𝒈 𝟏
𝑬 = [( ) ( 𝟐 ) ( )] (𝑿𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅 − 𝑿𝒈𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒆 )
𝟐 𝒃𝒚 𝝐
Data Tables:

Constants Measured Value (in) Metric Conversion (m)

y 0.0625 0.001588
b 0.5 0.0127
XGauge 1 0.0254
X1 6 0.1524
X2 8 0.2032
X3 10 0.254
X4 12 0.3048
X5 16 0.4064

Mass (Kg) X1 X2 X3 X4 X5
m1 0.498 Strain 165 227 293 362 498
ECalc 176.229 179.335 178.635 176.716 175.168
(GPa)
m2 0.1 Strain 35 48 60 73 99
ECalc 166.826 170.302 175.168 175.968 176.937
(GPa)
m3 0.15 Strain 50 70 89 108 147
ECalc 175.168 175.168 177.136 178.412 178.743
(GPa)
m4 0.2 Strain 68 93 118 144 196
ECalc 171.733 175.796 178.137 178.412 178.743
(GPa)
m5 0.24 Strain 79 111 142 174 235
ECalc 177.385 176.746 177.635 177.181 178.895
(GPa)

Average Formula:
𝒏
𝟏
𝑨 = × ∑ 𝒙𝒊 = 𝟏𝟕𝟔. 𝟐𝟔𝟑 𝑮𝑷𝒂
𝒏
𝒊=𝟏

Standard Deviation Formula:

𝑵
𝟏
𝝈 = √ ∑(𝒙𝒊 − 𝝁)𝟐 = 𝟐. 𝟗𝟎𝟕
𝑵
𝒊=𝟏
Discussion:
Overall, the data we collected seems to be relatively accurate. Last week, we validated the
accuracy of our strain gauge which turned out to be relatively accurate thanks to our relatively
low percent of error at 18%. As for the data that we collected, there was only one data point of
the 25 values for Young’s modulus we calculated that was a significant outlier in the data set.
Thus, our standard deviation was very low making our data very accurate between each of the
individual trials. The strain readings make sense since they are quite linear in nature as we go
across the distances and that the strain should be relatively linear as we change the positions of
the masses. Also, the values for Young’s Modulus seem realistic since the values should be
about the same for every one of the 25 different data points. Also, most steels have a Young’s
modulus around 170-200 GPa. Thus, our calculated values must be relatively accurate. The
material is likely a hot rolled steel such as 1018 which has a relatively similar Young’s modulus.
However, there are still errors within this lab. First, the calipers we were using were not
consistently giving correct results due to metal chips being within the slide thus there is some
error due to this. Moreover, there is likely a factor of error within the listing of the masses that
we hung off of the beam which could cause errors in our calculations. Also, there could be
issues with our strain gauge such as improper adhesion to the beam’s surface, our heating of it
during soldering in which it may have been damaged, and the stain gauge may not have been
lined up perfectly.