HARDWARE
TecQuipment's Plastic Bending of Portals experiment enables students to apply single and combined loads to a portal frame, until plastic collapse. They monitor load and deflection, and note where plastic hinges form.
The equipment includes two long-travel digital deflection indicators and two load cells for measurement. It also includes two leads to connect to a Digital Force Display (STR1a), a vernier, a student guide and a lecturer guide. Extra specimen portals are available separately (STR16a).
Ideally, students will have used the Plastic Bending of Beams experiment (STR15) before progressing to Plastic Bending of Portals. The Plastic Bending of Beams experiment provides a basic understanding of underlying principles, such as plastic deformation, form factor and so on.
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VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS
The Plastic Bending of Portals Virtual Experiments Software enables computer simulation of experiments working with or without the Structures teaching hardware. It expands the scope of experimentation beyond the limits of the hardware, allowing students to explore and compare the effect of form factor on collapse load and construct an interaction diagram for both fixed and pinned fixing conditions and compare the failure modes.
During experiments, the software displays theoretical forces, corresponding deflections and bending moment diagram at the formation point of each plastic hinge. Students can visualise, tabulate and graph data, reducing the time required for students to obtain, process and present results. This allows students to realistically, efficiently and conveniently investigate and compare the properties of a wide selection of portals under varying applied loads.
The Virtual Experiments Software is available in a variety of multi-user and networked options, as well as single-user format.
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