Cooling of bi-material strips to generate curvature

This lecture demonstration package (LDP) concerns two simple elastic properties (the Young's modulus and the thermal expansivity), which can be understood in terms of inter-atomic forces (the Lennard-Jones potential). These two properties determine the curvature generated when a bonded pair of strips is exposed to temperature change. The practical involves cooling of three sets of bi-material strips by immersion in liquid nitrogen. The demonstration takes about 5 minutes.

• Introduction
• Young's Moduli and thermal expansivities of various types of material
• Curvature generation on changing the temperature of a bi-material strip
• IT resources - simulation of curvature generation
• Equipment and facilities needed for the demonstration
• Video of the demonstration

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First created: Aug 2012. Converted to HTML5: May 2022