Shear Force and Bending Moments

Shear Force and Bending Moments are one of the trickiest but also one of the easiest forms of physics in static level 4 engineering. If you can get your head around the physics then you'll be fine, looking at the directions however is not easy and it will all be cleared up when we solve a few solutions.

Shown below is the first states of shear force and bending moment physics and it's vital that you understand the different between a Fixed Support and Simple Support. 

Also shown below is a simply supported beam with a force acting upon it's centre, the reacting forces are the supports at either side. This entire step may be confusing and hard to follow, but bare with me a few examples in the next chapter will clear the air. 

The final part of this post expands on the previous example by not only applying a direct load but applying a load over a distance. This is called the UDL and depending on the way it is drawn will depend upon its characteristics, for the time being though the load is constant throughout the beam. 

A you can see from the two diagrams in this post the shear force and bending moment diagrams are a lot different due to the addition of a uniform load across the beam. This will be discussed further in the post.