Why are bridges built the way they are?

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Christian Kaufmann (@ckaufmann)

Number of views: 214

A concept that is misunderstood in engineering pertains to the concept of buckling. It sometimes isn’t apparent that the limiting compressive load carrying capacity of a column isn’t always the same as the compressive strength when the column material will break but rather it is sometimes limited by an elastic phenomenon called buckling which is based on the column’s geometry. Does that definition sound confusing? It is!