Intentional placement of additional mechanical loads in engineering

[Bozza36]

Homework Statement

Suggest one application in engineering where the intentional placement of additional loads would be useful?

Relevant Equations

N/A

Hello.

My answer to this question would be something along the lines of the placement of additional loads can allow for structural testings to investigate forces, bending moments and shear stresses in order to optimise beam designs. However, is this what the question is asking?

 

[Baluncore]

The question is open. What have you studied?
Static and dynamic balancing of machinery.
Ballast in ships hulls.

 

[Bozza36]

The question is open. What have you studied?
Static and dynamic balancing of machinery.
Ballast in ships hulls.

Thanks, that would be more appropriate to the question. I would imagine the Taipei 101 stabilising ball would also be applicable.

 

[Juanda]

Homework Statement: Suggest one application in engineering where the intentional placement of additional loads would be useful?
Relevant Equations: N/A

Hello.

My answer to this question would be something along the lines of the placement of additional loads can allow for structural testings to investigate forces, bending moments and shear stresses in order to optimise beam designs. However, is this what the question is asking?

An example of this is when working with anisotropic materials. Concrete is an example of such material because it's very good at resisting compression but pretty bad against tension (that's why we add steel rods to it).

Imagine you have a column of concrete and it's resisting a horizontal force applied at the top. That force will cause shear and a bending moment on the column. Let's ignore shear for the moment because its impact can be neglected most of the time when compared with the effect because of the bending. Such a bending moment will cause tension in one of the sides of the column which we already established that's not great for this material (assuming no steel rods are added to the concrete in this example).

So if you had an additional compressive load (an extra weight on top of the column for example) it would be beneficial for the column because you'd be reducing the tension acting on that side due to the bending and the additional compression on the other side can be easily resisted by the concrete anyways.

You'd even plot what's the maximum horizontal force a column could resist for a given additional compressive force and you'd realize how you can increase that horizontal force until you hit the compressive limit of the material or the buckling point. If I recall correctly the relation is not linear but I cannot find the diagrams at the moment. I'll leave the plot to you in case you are interested in doing so to get a firmer grasp on this matter.