Stress & Strain

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Stress & Strain

• Stress and strain in simple terms as it relates to lifting equipment.

• To gain an understanding of their effects on the equipment they are examining

and may be testing.

• How stress, strain and related matters affect lifting equipment.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Conditions of Force
Tension
• Example:- sling leg
• When used, as in the picture, then it is tension
• It is now subjected to a tensile load or force

Compression
• Example:- lifting jack
• When in use the jack is in compression
• It is now a compressive load or force throughout the body

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Conditions of Force
Single Shear
• Two plates bolted together and subjected to a tensile load
• The bolt is now subjected to shear stress between the two
plates

Double Shear
• Example:- shackle pin
• When load completely fills the jaws the shackle pin is in
double shear

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Stress & Strain
• Closely related, both being caused by an item being subjected to an applied force.

• When an item is subjected to a force the structure that makes up the material
resist that force and this cumulative resistance is Stress.

• As the structure resists the applied force, i.e. come under stress, the structure
deforms and this is called Strain

• Stress is measured in N/mm² or MN/mm² (Imperial unit of stress is tons/ins²)

• Strain is a ratio therefore it has no units

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Accepted Conversion Factors

• 1kg = 10 N

• 1 tonne = 10 kN

• 1 N/mm2 = 1MN/m²

• 1 ton/inch² = 15.44 MN/m²

• 1 lb/inch² = 6.894 kN/m²

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Tensile Test
Tensile testing reveals a great amount of information from the resulting
load extension diagram.

To carry out a test:-

A standard test piece of material is subjected to increasing loads applied
in a controlled manner.

A graph is plotted as the material elongates and eventually fails.

The resulting LOAD/EXTENSION diagram is also a diagram of

STRESS/STRAIN as the load results in stress and the extension is a
measure of the strain.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Tensile Test
A typical graph for a mild steel sample obtained by plotting Load (Stress) against
Elongation (Strain).

Five definite points can be seen as the line of the graph is produced.

These indicate the positions of the Limit of Proportionality, the Elastic Limit, the Yield
Point, the Tensile Strength and the Ultimate Breaking Stress.

With mild steel samples these points can be clearly seen as the graph starts as a
straight line, which then deforms and then takes on a distinctive curve.
8
©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010
 Other measurements may be determined from the test:
• Percentage Elongation. This is the increase in length divided by the
original length expressed as a percentage and this is a measure of the
materials ductility, i.e.
Increase in Length
% Elongation = x 100
Original Length

• Percentage Reduction in Area. This is the reduction in area at the point of

maximum `Necking' divided by the original cross sectional area expressed
as a percentage, i.e.

Decrease in CSA
% Reduction in Area = x100
Original CSA

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Elasticity, Hooke's Law, Young's Modulus
• Many materials show a constant stress/strain relationship as loading is applied
and as a result the term ‘Elastic Limit’ has to be used with care when referring to
the connection between stress and strain.

• Hooke's Law states: ‘Stress is proportional to Strain up to the Limit of

Proportionality’. Stress
ie = A Constant
Strain

• This ratio of stress and strain for a material, which shows this straight-line
relationship of load extension, is known as Young's Modulus of Elasticity, denoted
by symbol E. Stress
Hence E =
Strain

• For mild steel E = 200,000 MN/m2. This value gives a relationship of the force to
deformation within the elastic range of a material. Therefore the greater the
value of E the stiffer the material will be under load.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Calculate Stress
• Stress analysis will usually be done in SI units. So to recap:

Load
Stress =
Cross  sectional area

P
If Load = P Cross  sectional area = A  Stress =
A

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Calculate Stress
A steel bar 40mm x 30mm is subjected to a force of 100 kiloNewtons. Calculate the
stress:

P 100,000 100,000
Stress = = = = 83.33 N/ mm2
A 40x30 1,200

Now 1 N/ mm2 = 1 MN/ m2

Hence Stress = 83.33 N/ mm2 = 83.33 MN/ m2

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Stress Calculation
In the bolted joint shown, if the force F is 5000 N and the bolt has a cross-sectional
area of 79mm², to the nearest whole number, what is the stress in the bolt?

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Bending Stresses in Beams
• Any item that is supported at one or more positions with a load acting on a part
of it, other than at the point of support, can be considered as a beam.

• Most lifting accessories when placed under load behave as a beam and are
subject to bending stresses.

• Example: - the body of a shackle acts as a curved beam whilst the pin acts as a
straight beam.

• When a beam is loaded, it will deflect into a curve and:-

• The material on the outside of the curve will be in tension and therefore subject
to a tensile stress.

• The material on the inside of the curve will be in compression and therefore
subject to compressive stress.

• In the middle of the beam the material will not experience any stress.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Bending Stresses in Beams
• The majority of stress is in the outer layers of the beam whilst the centre portion
carries little of the stress.
• This is the reason why ‘I’ section beams (e.g. RSJ and UB) are so popular in
structural work.
• Most of the material is at the positions of maximum stress in the flanges and the
web serves mainly just to keep them in position.
• Because of this, for a given cross-sectional area, the deeper a beam, the greater
the load it can carry.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Three basic types of beam
(a) The simply supported beam - the beam is mounted on free or flexible supports.
(b) The encastre beam - the beam is held rigid by the supports.
(c) The cantilever beam - the beam is held rigid at one end and the other end is free.

Under load each type of beam will deform in a different way as illustrated below by
the deflection diagrams below.

Assuming same material, length and load, the encastre beam will not deflect as much
as the simply supported beam but the cantilever beam will deflect by a greater
amount than either of the others.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Bending Stresses
In a simply supported beam the applied load will result in stress and strain. The lower
part of the beam, directly under the load, will be in tension and therefore subject to a
TENSILE STRESS.

The top of the beam directly under the load, will be in COMPRESSION and therefore
subject to compressive stress, whilst in the middle of the beam will not experience
any stress.

The majority of stress is in the outer layers of the beam whilst the centre portion
carries little of the stress and the deeper a beam, the greater the load it can carry.

The beam will also be subject to shear stress due to the downward load and upward
reaction at the supports.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

 Bending Stresses
Intensity of the stress along the beam will depend on how the load is applied.

The simply supported beam below left has a single load acting at a point, whereas the
beam to the right has the load evenly distributed over the whole of its length.

For the same total load, the position of maximum stress would occur in both at the
centre but is only half as great for the evenly distributed load.

In Summary, the strength of a beam depends upon:

(a) The shape of the beam section.

(b) The span of the beam.
(c) The depth of the beam.
(d) The mode of load distribution.
(e) The method of support of the beam.

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010

©The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association 2010