Spirals are my favorite way to represent torsional moments in beams 🌀
Visualizing torsion has always been tricky. Moments about major and minor axes are easy to plot in 3D along with their corresponding axes. But torsion? How do you represent that when the axis runs parallel to the beam's centerline? Introducing spirals! 🥁
In this video, I’m using 6DOF dynamic relaxation to determine the equilibrium of a beam subjected to torque at its tip. As the simulation progresses, the spiral’s radius reflects the twist angle of the beam. Eventually, the simulation converges with a constant torsion along the entire cantilever, forming a spiral with a constant radius.
The first time I encountered this was through Daniel Piker's work with Kangaroo2. Absolutely brilliant.
Grasshopper definition in case anyone's interested in giving it a try.
