Structural Engineering & Statics
where the load goes
Concept

Reciprocal figure — where it appears

A force diagram drawn so that every space of a frame becomes a point and every joint a closed polygon, each member a line parallel to it and as long as its force. Maxwell showed the relation is symmetric, so either figure can be drawn from the other, and a plane frame has one exactly when it carries a stress.

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

A roof truss and its reciprocal figure. Left, a pitched roof truss of 8 m under three loads of 10.0 kN, its 13 members drawn in the colour of their force — 5 in tension, 6 in compression and 2 carrying nothing — with a letter on every region outside it between one external force and the next and a number on every cell inside it. Right, the force diagram: every lettered or numbered space is a point, every member is the line between the two spaces it separates, drawn parallel to the member and as long as its force, and every joint of the frame is a closed polygon. The eight joints and eleven spaces of the frame have become eight polygons and eight distinct points — fewer points than spaces, because some spaces land on one point, as the two either side of a member carrying nothing always do. Force times length adds to 190.0 kN·m over the tension members and 250.0 over the compression members, and the difference, −60.0, is fixed by the loads and where they act, whatever frame carries them. Each point was placed by crossing one member, and the 8 crossings not used to place anything all close to within 5e-15 kN.

Every space a point, every joint a polygon

A truss's force diagram is a second drawing of the truss in which the joints have become polygons and the spaces between members have become points. Maxwell showed in 1864 that the exchange runs both ways, so a designer can draw the forces first and ask what shape carries them. His theorem also says which frames have such a diagram at all, and the answer is a surprise, because it is about polyhedra.

equilibrium · Graphic statics Two pencil lines, and where they cross. Two lines drawn with a pencil 0.2 mm wide are two bands, drawn here much wider than a pencil so the shape can be seen, and they cross not at a point but in a parallelogram. At 60° apart the parallelogram's long diagonal is 2.0 pencil widths — 0.40 mm; at 12° apart the parallelogram's long diagonal is 9.6 pencil widths — 1.91 mm. The crossing's uncertainty along the bisector is the width divided by twice the sine of half the angle, so it grows without limit as the lines turn parallel, and a construction that finds a point by crossing two lines inherits it.

How wrong a drawing is

A pencil line is a band, and two bands cross in a parallelogram that grows as they turn parallel. The accuracy of a graphical construction is therefore a property of the angles it makes, not of the hand that made it — and the worst case is the shallow arch, the structure the method was most used on. Measured properly, the drawing's error there is the size of the builder's, and the check draughtsmen relied on cannot see it.

equilibrium · Graphic statics

Named alongside it

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

Force polygonGraphic staticsMethod of jointsTrussArchDeterminacyFunicularSelf-stressThrust lineTolerance

All concepts