Francisco Camacho

Mr. Hendricks

Engineering Principles II

15 February 2018

Report and Data Table of Crush and Shear Tests

The main goal of this activity was to have a taste of how being a material engineer is like

and see the types of problems that material engineers have to deal with. We were asked to make

beam and rods to test them for their ability to handle compression and shear. There were

different variables to make this. The variables were what ratio of water and plaster to make the

beam and rods, decide that materials were the most optimal for compression and shear test, and

how much of those materials to add in the mixture for the best mixture for this situation.

There were specific steps for the creation of molds for the beams and rods. The molds for

the beams were created with 3 popsicle sticks and tape. The steps to create a mold for the beam

are:

1) Put the 3 popsicle sticks next to each other, then two pieces of tape

will be needed to do the next step.

 2) Get one piece of tape long to cover the whole length of the

wood horizontally and place in the popsicle in the left and then one in

the middle. The first piece of tape won’t have the width to cover the

three popsicles so you’ll need to.

3) Get another piece of tape to place it in the popsicle all the way

to the right and the popsicle in the middle to unite all the popsicles.

Then making sure that the side with the tape on the inside push

upward the left and

4) Pull the left and right popsicle stick inward making sure that the tape is on the inside.

Like this.

5) Get little pieces of popsicle sticks to completely close the beam mold and use tape to

keep it on there.
 6) The end product should something like this

The popsicles were used to tape them in such a way that they had a

rectangular cube shape. The tape was supposed to be on the inside of

the mold, to later on, make the extraction of the beam easier.

The material needed for the rod mold were a 6-inch PVC pipe, plastic tube, and wood

plug. The steps were:

1) Cut 6-inch PVC pipe

2) Cut a 6 ½ plastic tube

3) Get a wood plug and insert it into the plastic

tube. If it’s too loose put some tape around the

plug to get a tighter fit.

4) Insert the plastic tube inside the PVC

tube
 Me and my the team agreed to use sand since it was learned before that adding little rocks

or pebbles to cement helped concrete with compression and the addition of sand could simulate

that same function of rock to plaster and help it resist more compression. Our team added too

much sand too much sand to the mixture and as a result, it worsened compression resistance, but

if the right amount of sand is added it can help to resist more compression.

Me and my team decided to use the materials of paper clips, angel hair, and paper balls to

add the into the plaster mixture to try and make an optimum design for tension as well as shear

and compression. We used paper clips paper clips to try and make wire since we knew it was

effective for tension, we decided to use angle hair since it was believed it would help with

tension resistance, and use paper ball since we thought that the consistency and squishiness

would help with compression.

The equipment used to test strengths of the

cylindrical rods and beams was lever type

mechanism and bathroom scale to measure the force

in pounds to later on calculate the psi. The lever

mechanism provided a mechanical advantage to be

able to put more force without putting too many force yourself. Everytime the bathroom scale

had to be modified so that it would mark 0 pounds even with the lever mechanism was on it so it

would only measure the force that was being put in and multiplied with the lever mechanism.

The strength testing procedures consisted on first testing compression and to do that as

shown in the next picture using a wood block with a hole for the

cylindrical rod you place the rod on there and start pushing

down slowly to see the force needed for initial failure and the

force needed for ultimate failure.

The strength testing procedure for shear consisted of putting the

beam on top of two wood block and put force on the middle of

the beam to test the shear strength.

Item Tested Dimensions Area Force Initial Pressure Initial Force Ultimate Pressure
(​Compression Ultimate
Test​)

Cylinder ⅝ “ Diameter .307 in​2 70 lbs 228 psi 90 lbs 293 psi
(Pure plaster)

Cylinder ⅝ “ Diameter .307 50 lbs 162.866 psi 85 lbs 276.872 psi

(Pure plaster)

Cylinder ⅝ “ Diameter .307 in​2 100 lbs 325.733 psi 130 lbs 423.453 psi
(Pure plaster)

Rectangular 11/16” x 1” .6875 in​2 N/A N/A 50 lbs 72.72 psi

Beam
(Plaster only)

Rectangular 9/16” x 1” .5625 in​2 N/A N/A 12 lbs 21.33

Beam
(Plaster only)

Rectangular 13/16” x 1” .8125 in​2 N/A N/A 32 lbs 39.385 psi

Beams
(Paperclips/Pla
ster)

Rectangular 13/16” x 1” .8125 in​2 N/A N/A 30 lbs 36.923 psi

Beams
(Paperclips/Pla
ster)

Rectangular 1” x 1” 1 in​2 N/A N/A 2 lbs 2 psi

(Beam Angel
hair, sand,
paper, and
wire)

Item Tested Dimensions Area Force Initial Pressure Initial Force Ultimate Pressure
(​Shear Test​) Ultimate
Cylinder ⅝ “ Diameter .307 in​2 10 lbs 32.573 psi 30 lbs 97.720 psi
(Plaster only)

Cylinder (Paper ⅝ “ Diameter .307 in​2 20 lbs 65.147 psi 35 lbs 114 psi
Clips/Plaster)

In comparison to other materials like concrete and aluminum, plaster seems pretty weak.

With concrete with a compressive strength of 2500 psi and the residential kind of 10,000 psi.

Concrete has tensile strength of 250 psi and the residential kind 1,000 psi. Aluminum has an

ultimate tensile strength of 45000 psi, ultimate bearing strength of 88000 psi, and shear strength

of 30000. While cylinders with pure plaster had an ultimate failure in compression ranging from

293 psi - 423.453 psi and ultimate failure in shear ranging from 97.720 psi - 114 psi. And beams

with pure plaster had ultimate failure in compression ranging from 21.33 psi - 72.72 psi.

An idea that worked well for increasing the compressive strength where to add a the right

amount of sand and that helped the plaster in its performance with compression, but sand was

also an idea that didn’t work so well if too much sand was added to the mixture it would make

decrease the compressive strength of the plaster.

Since we didn’t actually test tensile strength I wouldn’t be exactly sure of ideas that

would work well, but making my best inference an idea that would work well to increase tensile
strength was to paper clips or any other thing that would act as a wire, but the important thing to

make this work is if they are linked together otherwise there are spaces between the wire

allowing the plaster as easily as if it was normal plaster. And I wouldn’t be sure of an idea that

wouldn’t work well apart from not linking the wire together to even all the force.

Ideas that worked well was to also use wire or paper clips to make the splitting of the

plaster hard. Some ideas that didn’t work so well were to not link the wires as wells, because if

there were spaces it would it could split trough a part without wire. The other idea that didn’t

work so well was that to add too much thing to the mixture making it heavy and with little shear

resistance.

Some suggestions to get better result are first to maybe look into another material can be

better than plaster at resisting this forces. The other things are to learn and pick from the ideas

the work well and the ideas that didn’t work so well like using little sand and not putting a lot of

sand, using linked wire, and not adding too much stuff to the mixture.