Analysis of Cantilever Beam Deflection under Uniformly Distributed Load using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

In this study the deflection of a cantilever beam was simulated under the action of uniformly distributed load. The large deflection of the cantilever beam causes the non-linear behavior of beam. The prupose of this study is to predict the deflection of a cantilever beam using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The simulation of the deflection was carried out in MATLAB by using 2-D Finite Element Method (FEM) to collect the training data for the ANN. The predicted data was then verified again through a non linear 2-D geometry problem solver, FEM. Loads in different magnitudes were applied and the non-linear behaviour of the beam was then recorded. It was observed that, there is a close agreement between the predicted data from ANN and the results simulated in the FEM.