Structural Engineering & Statics
where the load goes
Concept

Brittleness — where it appears

The absence of plastic deformation before fracture, so that a member fails at its elastic limit with no warning and no redistribution. It is the property that makes a concrete cone breakout or a fracture from a flaw unacceptable as a governing mode, and it is why anchorage and capacity design arrange for something ductile to fail first.

Named by 2 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

rectangle±100 of 600 mm33.3% of the depth

The strength thrown away on purpose

Masonry, concrete and soil are all analysed as though they had no tensile strength whatever. Each of them has some. The decision to set it to zero is the single most consequential modelling assumption in the subject, it is safe for one kind of check and unsafe for another, and almost nothing that uses it says which.

materials · no tension 600 kN180 kN·mresultant at e = 300, outside the platemiddle third154.42 kNBolts engagedbearing over 150.88 mm at 20 N/mm² · 100% of 20

The failure that is in the concrete

An anchor bolt is a steel component and its capacity is usually decided by something else entirely — a cone of concrete pulled out around it, failing in tension, in a material every other calculation on the project has assumed cannot take tension at all. The exponent in the capacity says so: it is not the square the geometry implies.

connections · anchor breakout

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Load pathSize effectTensile strengthAnchorageBase plateBearing pressureBreakoutCapacity designCoverCracked sectionDuctilityEccentricity

All concepts