I remember that at the end of the second year of the institute, my friends and I went to practice in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. Among the other pleasures of this city is the beach on Komsomolsky Island (now this island is called in the old way, Monastyrsky). The Dnieper, warm sand, girls, light wine – everything contributed to the indulgence of grace. Once again, after swimming, I lay down to sunbathe and, having nothing to do, began to look at the trusses of the famous Merefo-Kherson bridge, several pillars of which were located on an island not far from us.
And then for the first time I felt like an engineer. I not only admired the span walking across the Dnieper, but for the first time I clearly understood why it was made this way and not otherwise. The beautiful bridge became even more beautiful for me, for which I immediately thanked the science of "resistance of materials", strength of materials, about the incomprehensibility of which there are so many student legends. I will notice right away that the legends are false. Like everything that is based on mathematics, sopromat is logical and comprehensible to a much greater extent than many other sciences that we have been and are being treated to.
I’m not saying that this science is extremely useful. In order not to go far for an example, I will tell you about the usual I-beam, which can be found anywhere. The shape of the I-beam is railroad rails and support beams in houses and bridges. I-beam is one of the most popular rolled steel profiles.
Where does the name come from, "double tee"? "Taurus" is Latin for "bull". The T-beam, horned like a bull, has the shape of the letter P in diameter, and the I-beam has the shape of the letter H and “horns" in both directions, as if two bulls met.
Such an unusual profile was not chosen in vain. The fact is that, according to calculations, when a solid beam is bent, the stresses of the material in it are distributed along the central axis. The magnitude of the voltage is proportional to the distance from this axis. The closer to the central axis of the beam, the lower the shear stress. Therefore, it is economically advantageous to simply remove that part of the beam that carries a very small load or does not experience any load at all. What is being done. Mild steel I-beams are produced in huge quantities and in a wide variety of sizes. The production of an I-beam requires almost half the amount of metal. At the same time, such a beam is almost seven times stronger and has more than 30 times higher rigidity than a square beam.
As you can see, knowledge of the strength of materials allows us to correctly calculate the strength of any structures and avoid, where possible, overspending of materials.