Forces and Moments: Part 8

 

Distributed loading:

 

Wind, fluids, and the weight of a material supported over a body’s surface are examples of distributed loadings. Pressure p (force/unit area) is the intensity of these loadings.

 

The loading function is written as  p=p(x) Pa or N/m2. Because it is a function of  and it is uniform along the y-axis. If we multiply p=p(x) by width a, we get w= p(x). a which is called the load intensity.

[with the dimension of (N/m2)(m)=N/m]

So  w= w(x) N/m.

 

The system of forces of intensity w=w(x) can be simplified into a single resultant force FR and its location x can be specified.

Magnitude of the resultant force:

 

So in general, the magnitude of FR is defined by calculating the volume under the distributed loading curve p=p(x) and the location of resultant force is determined by finding the centroid of this volume.