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Equilibrium
- A basement is a boat
- Answering one question without solving the rest
- Balanced, and four times as heavy
- Counting the unknowns, and finding out whether statics can answer
- Equivalent in work, not in resultant
- Every pressure points at the pin
- Everything adds to nothing, and that is the whole of statics
- Most of it is suction
- Moving a force, and what it costs
- Six equations, and the drawing shows three
- The angle that doubles the force
- The area that is not in the equation
- The check that cannot see the error
- The count that does not see it
- The envelope is not a structure
- The equation that is not new, and the three that are
- The force that is capped on purpose
- The force that is really an acceleration
- The force that is whatever it needs to be
- The free body is a choice, and choosing it well is the whole skill
- The ground is a mechanism
- The load a beam is given is a decision
- The load that arrives where the wind stops
- The load that depends on what carries it
- The load that is never all there at once
- The load that is really a lean
- The load that is spread out, and the force that replaces it
- The member with only one direction
- The pipe decides what the soil weighs
- The point the mechanism turns about
- The pressure that stops growing
- The surface that has to be searched for
- The weight that has to be known before it can be found
- Three forces must meet at a point, and a drawing can find it
- Two ways of being wrong
- Weight is the only thing resisting it
- Whether it tips or slides
- The pier that moves in jumps
- Seventy-five per cent each way
- The order the loads arrived in
- Half as far between the legs
- The line that pairs four forces
- The pole decides the drawing, not the answer
- The pin that is not a point
- The column given more than its rectangle
- It tips inside its own hull
- The cut that needs a joint first
- Every space a point, every joint a polygon
- The arch that is only its three hinges
- The polygon that runs out of freedom
- How wrong a drawing is
- Rigid by every test, and still folding
- The ballast that helps it over
Internal forces
- A check made on a perimeter, not on a section
- After the first yield, which is not the end
- A pile has no length until the ground gives it one
- Bending that arrives as twist
- Half the studs, and most of the beam
- How far a wrong load reaches
- Shear across a crack that is already there
- The analysis that assumes the answer
- The angle is a choice, not a property
- The bay that is cast last
- The beam that becomes a truss
- The beam that sits on the ground
- The coating that takes the resistance with it
- The connection is busiest where the beam is not
- The crack that never reached forty-five degrees
- The deck that spans square
- The diagram is an integral, and that is why it can be drawn by eye
- The force nobody put in the model
- The force that arrives along a length
- The force that is only a radius
- The force that splits what it pushes on
- The ground that hangs on instead of holding up
- The internal force with no diagram
- The length a structure was never given
- The load put on backwards
- The load that comes from changing direction
- The load that has to be lifted
- The moment over the support, and what it buys
- The moment that goes round the corner
- The moment that was moved on purpose
- The moment that was shed has to land
- The moment that will not lie flat
- The moment the beam left behind
- The node is the part that is checked
- The pile that is too short to bend
- The prestress that pushes back
- The shear the chords take
- The steel decides how many, not how much
- The stiffest path takes the load
- The strength with no mechanism in it
- The support that is not a point
- The tendon that can be moved
- The torque that has nowhere to go
- The torque that should not be shed
- The torsion that goes away if you let it
- The train that is worse than its heaviest axle
- The worst place to stand
- Three times as strong under a smaller pad
- Turn the column, and the slab passes
- Two beams, or one beam four times as stiff
- Two models of one bracket
- Two of these move and the third cannot
- Two walls that agreed to be one
- What a cut reveals, and why it was there all along
- When there is no section to design
- Where to put the supports, which is not at the ends
Stability
- A column nine hundred millimetres long
- An average stiffness is not a safe stiffness
- A third of what the theory promised
- Counted, not checked
- Guessing the shape, and getting the load anyway
- Held, and not held
- Held everywhere, and it forgets its length
- Hung from above and still unstable
- It does not buckle, it runs out of width
- Strong enough and still falls over
- The arch that leans instead of squashing
- The beam that fails sideways
- The best design is the most sensitive one
- The brace on the wrong flange
- The brace that need not be strong
- The buckle that will not spread out
- The buckling load with no compression in it
- The coefficient that is not four
- The column made of two columns
- The column that fails years later
- The column that leans on its neighbours
- The column that twists instead of bending
- The column that was never straight
- The column that had yielded before it was loaded
- The ends decide the length that matters
- The lacing decides the force it has to carry
- The load it cannot buckle under
- The load that chooses its own length
- The load that makes itself worse
- The load that moves with the twist
- The mode between the two that get checked
- The most dangerous day is before it is finished
- The panel that carries more after it has failed
- The pinned base that is not pinned
- The plate that ripples, and the width that is left
- The pressure that needs no direction
- The restraint that beats the gradient
- The rib that is a boundary condition
- The roof that jumps
- The shape of the diagram, and not its peak
- The stiffness the load takes away
- The tension has to pull on something
- The third root of the cubic
- The tie that spends an afternoon as a strut
- The tube that flattens itself
- The web that is crushed from inside
- Too tall for nothing but itself
- Twice the moment, four times the brace
- Two ways of buckling at once
- Four was never a fact about plates
- Classified by a gradient it does not have
- A row of frames is not a foundation
- The formula that reads four numbers
Structures
- A determinate truss has no robustness at all
- A shell only if the grid takes shear
- Cross the hangers and the bending goes
- Depth is the cheapest strength there is
- Every level is a longer span
- Every prop has its own worst day
- Every section was somewhere else
- Folded until it spans
- Halving the panel buys a shorter strut
- Held by something that goes soft
- Held up by the air inside
- How a tall building stands still
- Hung from the top, and nine per cent lighter
- Nine piles, and four times the settlement
- One drawing solves the whole truss
- The arm that makes the columns work
- The cable that is a spring
- The chord is a continuous beam
- The columns that lean
- The column that stops
- The corner columns take more than their share
- The corner that moves most
- The deck is not there to carry the load
- The deck that is its own cable
- The floor is a beam lying down
- The forces that are there with nothing applied
- The force the brace leaves behind
- The frame is a girder stood on end
- The frame that leans, and what stops it
- The hinge put in on purpose
- The line that must stay inside
- The lining that is stronger for being weaker
- The part that is meant to be weak
- The polygon that finds the shape
- The same span, four ways
- The shape that carries itself, and the arch that is its reflection
- The slab that spans both ways
- The stiffness that comes from the shape
- The structure that survives losing a member
- The structure that was never complete
- The summer that is worse than the last
- The surface that carries by being curved
- The tension that was left out
- The thrust that never reaches the ground
- The tree that strength does not ask for
- The triangle that cannot fold, and everything built out of it
- The truss with no diagonals
- The weight that makes it safer
- Three equations at every joint
- Two curvatures of opposite sign
- Two diagonals, one of which is absent
- What the second arm is worth
- Where the structure is allowed to move
- The joint that is not a pin
Connections
- A joint made of springs in series
- Built to the wrong length
- Making a moment cross a gap
- Neither pinned nor rigid, which is every real connection
- The angle that uses half of itself
- The bolts that do not share
- The bolt that carries more than its share
- The connection is not a point, and every diagram so far says it is
- The corner that is not the worst point
- The detail decides and the steel does not
- The direction a plate was never tested in
- The end that is only a plate
- The failure that is in the concrete
- The force the bolt never saw applied
- The hole made bigger so the steel would fit
- The hole that goes oval, and the one that tears to the edge
- The joint that carries nothing until it slips
- The joint that has to be as good as the member
- The joint that is crooked by construction
- The joint that is not where it was drawn
- The joint that was chosen
- The metal between the holes, which comes out as a block
- The plate that is only as big as it is thick
- The radius rule, and where it fails
- The redistribution nobody chose
- The roller that is not a roller
- The section that is checked is not the one chosen
- The shape that came out of the shop
- The smallest of six failures
- The tear that goes diagonally, and the correction that has no derivation
- The thickness that decides who fails
- The weld that is stronger across than along
- The weld that is stronger where it is pulled
- The width nobody drew
- Where the structure meets the ground, and when the bolts start working
- The eccentricity at right angles to the drawing
- Two fasteners that never arrive together
- How much of the plate is bending
- The torque that goes into the thread
- The compression that stays under the flange
- The repair that fixes the wrong check
- The throat that misses the load
- The joint that has to keep turning
- The plate that arrives after the load
- The bolt group has no neutral axis
- The rows have to share one fold
- The bolt that was already stretched
- The bracket pushed from the wrong side
- The better method flatters the worse layout
- The bolt that was never fitted
- The strongest layout leans on one bolt
- The joint whose lines may not meet
- The hinge that forms in the other flange
Sections
- A section made of two materials, one of them pretended away
- Bending is a pair of forces, pushing and pulling
- Both at once, and neither matters until it does
- Deliberately the wrong shape
- Four corners and a mechanism
- Four inequalities and a wedge
- One diaphragm is nearly none
- One plate and three structures
- The answer is continuous and the catalogue is not
- Plane sections stay plane, and what the assumption costs
- The axis a column buckles about
- The axis that moves when the section yields
- The bar that was bent before it was loaded
- The circle nobody draws
- The dimension nobody can measure
- The eccentricity a purlin cannot avoid
- The flange that is not all there
- The hole that costs nothing, and everything
- The material far from the middle does nearly all the work
- The middle third
- The one length a section takes into a column
- The point that is not in the section
- The same steel, and a wider crack
- The same steel in a different shape, and a factor of forty
- The section calculation with no formula in it
- The section has two areas
- The section made of pieces
- The section that cannot stay flat
- The section that changed while it was being loaded
- The section that changes along the span
- The section that governs is inside the haunch
- The section that will not keep its shape
- The shear nobody draws
- The shear that decides a timber beam
- The slit that costs a factor of six hundred
- The steel the concrete asks for
- The stress nobody restrained
- The web that carries no bending
- The wide side goes inside
- The worst stress is not where the worst bending is
- Three actions on one web
- Two cells, one equation, and a web with nothing in it
- Two moments and a neutral axis that obeys neither
- Two strengths, depending which way up
- Two volumes, and both of them are torques
- What is left after it ripples
- What is left after the first fibre yields
- When half the section has given up
- Where a bar may stop
- Where the steel is, not how much of it
- The flange works least where the shear is largest
- Two skins and the space between them
- Loaded straight down, and it moves sideways
Deflection
- An influence line is a deflected shape
- A third of the load crosses sideways
- Built to the wrong shape on purpose
- Choose what to take away
- One deflection, without solving everything
- One support too many, and what it costs to know
- Solved by passing it around
- Span to the fourth, which is why spans are short
- Stiffer than its cracked section says
- Stiffer than the model said
- Stiffness is not strength, and usually it is the one that governs
- The addition everything else rests on
- The angle nobody limits
- The answer that depends on how it was divided
- The arch that gets shorter
- The area of a diagram is a rotation
- The beam whose moment is a deflection
- The columns are shorter than the core
- The crack is a strain, not a slope
- The curvature nobody applied
- The deflection that belongs to the support
- The deflection that is a derivative
- The gap nobody computed
- The limit that depends on a date
- The matrix that replaced the hand methods
- The member that is not worth stiffening
- The movement nobody applied
- The movement with no limit against it
- The settlement that matters is the difference
- The stiffness that belongs to the span
- The support that moved
- The theorem that swaps the question round
- The water that will not run off
- Two motions with one name
- Where a deflection comes from
- Which member moved the roof
- Why it converges, and how fast
- Every joint balanced, and the frame still leaning
- Told what the far end is doing
- The table that cannot be read halfway
- The drawing that is right except for a rotation
- The shear that moves the moments
- The fixed-end moment is a column stress
- The deflection that is not bending
- The elastic centre is not on the frame
- Any structure will carry the unit load
- The other area under the curve
- The centre that hangs in the air
- The axes that have to be turned first
- The load that is not a load
- Three, and what three is a property of
- The truss that is stiff by accident
Dynamics
- A structure has more than one period
- Made weaker on purpose
- Most of the mass moves together
- Pushed over until it will not stand
- The block that is safer for being bigger
- The brace that yields both ways
- The bridge that was pushed by its own sway
- The damper that is too near the end
- The damping that is radiated
- The earthquake asks for a displacement
- The floor that is strong and unusable
- The force read off a frequency
- The gap between two buildings
- The ground has a period of its own
- The ground is a spring
- The liquid has a period of its own
- The load that is over before it has moved
- The machine that shakes the building
- The mass that helps by being late
- The motion that feeds itself
- The only damping is the landing
- The only thing that stops it
- The period nobody chose
- The resonance that ran out of time
- The spectrum a floor hands on
- The spectrum is not a load
- The train that arrives in time with itself
- The wind is a spectrum
- The wind that brings its own frequency
- Twice the deflection, for the same load
- The modes that were left out
- The pattern that stopped describing the building
- A wall that is allowed to lift
- The frequency below both checks
- The line of ties that stops short
- The force that belongs to the model
- The crowd that is also the structure
- The weight that was dropped
- Weaker in one place, and better on every average
- The floor that arrives at a column
- The force a filler can promise
- The damper that ends up as a joint
- The tendon that forgets its prestress
- The damping that comes through the sides
- The stay shaken along its own length
- The twist the combination rule invents
- The damping that belongs to no mode
- The top floor the bearings shake
- Two modes that are really a plane
- What a mode shape notices that a frequency does not
- The modes at zero frequency
- The rock that sends the waves back
- The blow that has no frequency
Materials
- Designed to be found in time
- Each one stops the other failing
- Squeezed sideways into a different material
- The bigger one is the weaker one
- The coincidence reinforced concrete stands on
- The curve was rising the whole time
- The cycles that do not count
- The deflection that arrives three years late
- The ductility that depends on the ruler
- The flaw that sets the strength
- The hole that multiplies the stress by three
- The hour that is really a temperature
- The load that comes from inside
- The load that never came near failing anything
- The load that was left on too long
- The map with three regions
- The material that has a direction
- The notch a crack does not feel in full
- The one number a stronger steel does not change
- The property that appears in none of the equations
- The ranking belongs to the load case
- The same steel, brittle in January
- The section that cannot reach its own strength
- The section that yields from the outside in
- The shear strength nobody measured
- The steel that is stronger in a millisecond
- The strain that was imposed, and the stress that leaked away
- The strength it had on the day
- The strength no specimen had
- The strength that belongs to the test programme
- The strength that is never used
- The strength the welder gives back
- The strength thrown away on purpose
- The stress that leaks away
- The stress that was there before the load
- The structure that settles down, and the one that walks
- The temperature is a shape
- Two ways to fail, and the curve between them
- What is left when the load comes off
- Yielding one way, and then the other
- The creep that belongs to the member
- The fire that goes out
- Which reversal closes the loop
- The slab that dries from one face
- The support that had no moment when it was cast
- The prestress the member takes back
- The load it can carry once
- The stress at which nothing in particular happens
- The cut-off belongs to the water
- The record played backwards
- The loops a crack grows on
- The rule that points sideways
- The slab that shrinks onto a finished beam