Zero-G Cantilever Truss Printer: Beam Deflection Lab (2D)
2D companion to the zero-g truss printer: a real Euler-Bernoulli beam solver computes tip deflection and root bending stress for a growing self-weight cantilever from actual material stiffness and yield strength, across Earth, Lunar and microgravity.
The 3D original visualizes a robotic print head laying down a cantilevered truss arm and compares Earth gravity against microgravity with a fixed, hand-picked collapse threshold. This 2D companion replaces that threshold with a genuine structural calculation: a uniformly distributed self-weight load w = ρAg, drawn from the selected material's real density and the spar's actual hollow-tube cross-section, drives the textbook Euler-Bernoulli cantilever deflection δ_tip = wL⁴/(8EI) and root bending stress σ = M·r/I, checked against that material's real yield strength. Switch material or drag the spar radius and the beam's stiffness (E, I) updates live, instantly reshaping the sag and stress readouts. Enable the temporary scaffold and a completed span stops behaving like a cantilever and switches to the much stiffer simply-supported beam formula — the same physical transition a real orbital assembly crew would rely on.
Euler-Bernoulli beam theory on a growing self-weight cantilever: w=ρAg from material density and a hollow-tube section (A, I computed from spar radius and a 20%-radius wall thickness), δ_tip=wL⁴/(8EI), M_root=wL²/2, σ_root=M_root·r_outer/I compared against the material's real yield strength (Aluminum 270 MPa, Carbon-fiber 600 MPa, Steel 250 MPa). A scaffold-bridged span switches to the simply-supported self-weight solution δ(x)=wx(L³−2Lx²+x³)/(24EI). Earth (9.81 m/s²), Lunar (1.62 m/s²) and microgravity (0) are directly comparable at the same printed length.
2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install