Given this cross section of a reinforced concrete column, determine what percentage of an axial load would be carried by the concrete and what percentage would be carried by the steel reinforcing bars. The procedures and methods of analysis that you will learn as you work your way through this course will provide the basis for the solution of many basic analysis and design problems such as those described above. Some of these problems you will be able to work through in their entirety by the end of this course, while for others you will be able to provide a significant portion of the solution which can then be combined with material and information from future courses such as Strength of Materials, Structural Analysis, etc. In a addition, related concepts such as friction, centroids and moments of inertia are introduced. This area of study can be described as Static Rigid Body Mechanics .
Any analysis associated with rigid body mechanics is based on Newton's Laws of Motion .
Any body which is acted on by a zero resultant force will remain at rest, if initially at rest, or will continue to move with a constant linear velocity if already in motion. There are a number of preliminary concepts, ideas and familiarities that need to be dealt with at the outset of this course so everyone is starting with the same minimum background. The course participant will have seen most of these items in their high school Physics courses. This course will require the participants be bilingual as far as units are concerned. However, since Canada has this large trading partner to the south called the U.S. of A. and since most engineering there is carried out in US customary units, it is felt that those who complete this course should be familiar with both sets of units.