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Chapter three:
Equilibrium condition in two dimensions
A body is said to be in equilibrium condition. If all forces and moments applied to it are in balance.
The vector expression of equilibrium equation for two dimensional problems may be written in scalar
form as
∑ 𝐹𝑥 = 0 , ∑ 𝐹𝑦 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ∑ 𝑀 = 0
The three equations must be satisfied for complete equilibrium in two dimensions.
Categories of equilibrium
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Constraint and statically determinacy
Constraint refers to the restriction to movement, which the equation that are adequate to determine
all the unknowns depends on the characteristics of constraint against possible movement of the body
provided by its support
Consider the roller support shown below (Figure 1); it can only provide a constraint normal to the
surface but it doesn’t provide a tangential constraint unlike pin supports (Figure 2)
Figure 1 Figure 2
Statically determinate and indeterminate
When all the forces in a structure can be determined strictly form these equations, the structure is
referred to as statically determinate.
The following figure shows a statically determinate structure because the number of equations and the
number of unknowns is equal.
Equations
∑ 𝐹𝑥 = 0 , ∑ 𝐹𝑦 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ∑ 𝑀 = 0
Unknowns
𝐶𝑥 , 𝐶𝑦 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑦
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A structure is said to be indeterminate when the number of unknowns exceed the number of
equilibrium equations
As a general rule, a structure can be identified as being either statically determinate or statically
indeterminate by drawing free-body diagrams of all its members, or selective parts of its members, and
then comparing the total number of available equilibrium equations. For a coplanar structure there are
at most three equilibrium equations for each part, so that if there is a total of n parts and r force and
moment reactions components, we have
Examples:
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Equilibrium condition in three dimensions
The two vector equations of equilibrium in three dimensions and their scalar components may be
written as
∑ 𝐹𝑥 = 0 , ∑ 𝐹𝑦 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ∑ 𝐹𝑍 = 0
∑ 𝑀𝑥 = 0 , ∑ 𝑀𝑦 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ∑ 𝑀𝑍 = 0
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Chapter three: Solved problems
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Solution:
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Solution: Solution:
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Solution: Solution:
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