Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Matter" to "Mecklenburg" / Volume 17, Slice 8

by Various

§ 4. Stability, Stiffness and Strength.—A structure may be damaged or destroyed in three ways:—first, by displacement of its pieces from their proper positions relatively to each other or to the earth; secondly by disfigurement of one or more of those pieces, owing to their being unable to preserve their proper shapes under the pressures to which they are subjected; thirdly, by breaking of one or more of those pieces. The power of resisting displacement constitutes stability, the power of each piece to resist disfigurement is its stiffness; and its power to resist breaking, its strength.

§ 5. Conditions of Stability.—The principles of the stability of a structure can be to a certain extent investigated independently of the stiffness and strength, by assuming, in the first instance, that each piece has strength sufficient to be safe against being broken, and stiffness sufficient to prevent its being disfigured to an extent inconsistent with the purposes of the structure, by the greatest forces which are to be applied to it. The condition that each piece of the structure is to be maintained in equilibrium by having its gross load, consisting of its own weight and of the external pressure applied to it, balanced by the resistances or pressures exerted between it and the contiguous pieces, furnishes the means of determining the magnitude, position and direction of the resistances required at each joint in order to produce equilibrium; and the conditions of stability are, first, that the position, and, secondly, that the direction, of the resistance required at each joint shall, under all the variations to which the load is subject, be such as the joint is capable of exerting—conditions which are fulfilled by suitably adjusting the figures and positions of the joints, and the ratios of the gross loads of the pieces. As for the magnitude of the resistance, it is limited by conditions, not of stability, but of strength and stiffness.

§ 6. Principle of Least Resistance.—Where more than one system of resistances are alike capable of balancing the same system of loads applied to a given structure, the smallest of those alternative systems, as was demonstrated by the Rev. Henry Moseley in his Mechanics of Engineering and Architecture, is that which will actually be exerted—because the resistances to displacement are the effect of a strained state of the pieces, which strained state is the effect of the load, and when the load is applied the strained state and the resistances produced by it increase until the resistances acquire just those magnitudes which are sufficient to balance the load, after which they increase no further.

This principle of least resistance renders determinate many problems in the statics of structures which were formerly considered indeterminate.

§ 7. Relations between Polygons of Loads and of Resistances.—In a structure in which each piece is supported at two joints only, the well-known laws of statics show that the directions of the gross load on each piece and of the two resistances by which it is supported must lie in one plane, must either be parallel or meet in one point, and must bear to each other, if not parallel, the proportions of the sides of a triangle respectively parallel to their directions, and, if parallel, such proportions that each of the three forces shall be proportional to the distance between the other two,—all the three distances being measured along one direction.

Fig. 86.

Considering, in the first place, the case in which the load and the two resistances by which each piece is balanced meet in one point, which may be called the centre of load, there will be as many such points of intersection, or centres of load, as there are pieces in the structure; and the directions and positions of the resistances or mutual pressures exerted between the pieces will be represented by the sides of a polygon joining those points, as in fig. 86 where P1, P2, P3, P4 represent the centres of load in a structure of four pieces, and the sides of the polygon of resistances P1 P2 P3 P4 represent respectively the directions and positions of the resistances exerted at the joints. Further, at any one of the centres of load let PL represent the magnitude and direction of the gross load, and Pa, Pb the two resistances by which the piece to which that load is applied is supported; then will those three lines be respectively the diagonal and sides of a parallelogram; or, what is the same thing, they will be equal to the three sides of a triangle; and they must be in the same plane, although the sides of the polygon of resistances may be in different planes.

Fig. 87.

According to a well-known principle of statics, because the loads or external pressures P1L1, &c., balance each other, they must be proportional to the sides of a closed polygon drawn respectively parallel to their directions. In fig. 87 construct such a polygon of loads by drawing the lines L1, &c., parallel and proportional to, and joined end to end in the order of, the gross loads on the pieces of the structure. Then from the proportionality and parallelism of the load and the two resistances applied to each piece of the structure to the three sides of a triangle, there results the following theorem (originally due to Rankine):—

If from the angles of the polygon of loads there be drawn lines (R1, R2, &c.), each of which is parallel to the resistance (as P1P2, &c.) exerted at the joint between the pieces to which the two loads represented by the contiguous sides of the polygon of loads (such as L1, L2, &c.) are applied; then will all those lines meet in one point (O), and their lengths, measured from that point to the angles of the polygon, will represent the magnitudes of the resistances to which they are respectively parallel.