Structures or Why Things Don't Fall down

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the only sort of elasticity which is stable under fluid pressures at high strains follow an exponential stress~strain curve (our veins and arteries operat under ~50% strain, and wouldn't work if they were under rubber-like straess-strain curves). This curve means you don't need much stress at first for any strain, but after a while the slope increases dramatically What are structures? A structure is a collection of materials intended to sustain loads. Structures occur in nature as well as in the man-made world.

If however, by some miracle, the floor produced a larger thrust than my feet have called upon it to produce, say 201 pounds, then the result would be still more surprising because, of course, I should become airborne . How do our tendons work? Why do we get “lumbago”? How were players’ dactyls able to weigh so little? Why do birds have leathers & How do our arteries work? Overall, I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the rich history and design process of the structures of our daily lives.

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Building a roof represents a challenge. The roof exerts outward pressure on the walls, even more so when there are windows. Beams solve this by redirecting the pressure from the ceiling downwards and away from the walls. In other words, force is directed downwards not horizontally on the supporting elements. Creep is a permanent deformation of materials Artificial, man-made structures began not that long ago. The modern study of structures began with in the seventeenth century when Galileo switched his career — due to threats from the Catholic Church — from astronomy to the study of the character of physical materials. Stiffness, aka Young’s modulus of elasticity, measures the elasticity of a material under stress and is a function of the other two properties. It defines the relationship between stress (force per unit area) and strain (proportional deformation) in a material. Compression forces are more durable than tensile forces the failure of a structure may be controlled, not by the strength, but by the brittleness of the material The thrust line can of course be applied to columns, arches and other structural elements as well. But let’s look at the example of the walls. In case, there is only the dead load (self-weight) of the walls acting then the thrust line would be in the middle of the walls.

A structure has been defined as “an assemblage of material which is rent to sustain loads, and the study of structures one of the traditional branches of science.

Structures or Why Things Don’t Fall Down Features:

Poisson's ratio says that every material has a constant ratio of strain in one direction when a stress is applied creating strain in a perpindicular direction. q=e2/e1 where e1 = strain in the direction of s1 and a line passing down the wall of a building from the top to the bottom which defines the position at which the vertical thrust can be considered as acting in each successive joint.” (p.181) Rich and readable…personal, witty and ironic.”–“Scientific American Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon – eBook Details