Chapter 10: Moments of Inertia
Applications
Many structural members like beams and columns have cross sectional
shapes like an I, H, C, etc..
Why do they usually not have solid rectangular, square, or circular
cross sectional areas?
What primary property of these members influences design
decisions?
Applications
Many structural members are made of tubes
rather than solid squares or rounds. Why?
This section of the book covers some
parameters of the cross sectional area that
influence the designer’s selection.
Recap from last chapter: First moment of
an area (centroid of an area)
The first moment of the area A with respect to the x-axis is given by
The first moment of the area A with respect to the y-axis is given by
The centroid of the area A is defined as the point C of coordinates ̅ and , which satisfies the
relation
In the case of a composite area, we divide the area A into parts , ,
Brief tangent about terminology: the term moment as we will use in this chapter refers to
different “measures” of an area or volume.
The first moment (a single power of position) gave us the centroid.
The second moment will allow us to describe the “width.”
An analogy that may help: in probability the first moment gives you the mean (the center of
the distribution), and the second is the standard deviation (the width of the distribution).
Mass Moment of Inertia
Mass moment of inertia is the mass property of a rigid body that determines the torque needed
for a desired angular acceleration ( ) about an axis of rotation (a larger mass moment of inertia around
a given axis requires more torque to increase the rotation, or to stop the rotation, of a body about that
axis).
Mass moment of inertia depends on the shape and density of the body and is different around different
axes of rotation.
Torque-acceleration relation:
where the mass moment of inertia is defined as
Mass moment of inertia for a disk:
Moment of Inertia
(or second moment of an area)
Moment of inertia is the property of a deformable body that determines the moment needed to
obtain a desired curvature about an axis. Moment of inertia depends on the shape of the body and may
be different around different axes of rotation.
Moment-curvature relation:
E: Elasticity modulus (characterizes stiffness of the deformable body)
: curvature
The moment of inertia of the area A with respect to the
x-axis is given by
The moment of inertia of the area A with respect to the
y-axis is given by
Polar moment of inertia
Moment of inertia of a rectangular area
Polar moment of inertia of a circle
Parallel axis theorem
Often, the moment of inertia of an area is known for an axis passing through the centroid; e.g.,
x’ and y’:
The moments around other axes can be computed from the known Ix’ and Iy’:
Note: the integral over y’
gives zero when done through
the centroid axis.
Moment of inertia of composite
• If individual bodies making up a composite body have individual areas A and moments of
inertia I computed through their centroids, then the composite area and moment of
inertia is a sum of the individual component contributions.
• This requires the parallel axis theorem
• Remember:
• The position of the centroid of each component must be defined with respect to the same
origin.
• It is allowed to consider negative areas in these expressions. Negative areas correspond to
holes/missing area. This is the one occasion to have negative moment of inertia.
