I went to my friends house today with 30' of square tubing ready to build my long arms and he refused to believe that square tubing is stronger that round tubing. Well who is right?
square or round tubing
nathon001
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Of course rock crawling isn't straight line, but you do have a point about the overbuilding/weight issue. I'm soaking all this up before I start building...OverThrottle said:
Ok.. so rockcrawling defys all the laws of physics?
The only reason mathamatical equations, if you using the proper ones, are not representing how things are actually working is becuase you are overlooking factors. Sure, if you overbuild it strong enought, it will hold up fine, but at the cost of weight and money. It's always a good idea to overengineer somewhat so that the part should last, but overkill is not always a good thing. The more you overkill parts, the heavier it's gonna get, and the more stuff your going to end up breaking.
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To answer the original question at hand, if you compare round vs. square with the same diameter or width, wall thickness, and material the square would be stronger for a suspension link. That is considering bending, tension and buckling strengths, all of which a suspension link is subjected to. The loading on a suspension link is really very simple, I'm an engineer, I know the equations, I don't need to try and dazzle you with them, it took me 5 minutes to look up moments of inertia in a handbook and compare them, also some experience and common sense doesn't hurt. It doesnt matter if the square is flat or on edge. Yes the square will be heavier and maybe you should compare strength vs. weight but I don't have time for that right now. Another thing to cosider is material selection, square is pretty much only available one grade, but round is available in DOM and 4130, both of which are stronger than square tubing grades, and 4130 has the potential to be heat treated to increase it's strength drastically.
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Great. So what are you going to do when, since you only worried about anti-squat... you end up with a rear suspension that won't let you stick your line during articulation, because it has 4 inches of rear steer? Or, as usually is found along with that... it has a roll center so low the body practically pulls the rig over the moment you look at a side-hill the wrong way?donjr5 said:
Dude, it's not terribly complicated to build a suspension, but it's not quite *THAT* easy to build one that really works well.
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Really? Now I am really confused. I had always assumed hollow was used more often simply for weight and cost savings. I know that a thick guage is stronger then a thinner one of the same OD. If hollow truly is stronger then solid, than at some point, the my statement would have to be false. At what point would a thinner wall be stronger than a thicker?SeaBass44 said:
STFU........when you find out why round is stronger, also see how hollow is stronger then solid
I guess I am going to have to invest some time into reading up on mechanical engineering. The more I hear, the less sense it seems to make!
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Dont waste your time, hollow IS NOT stronger that solid. This is a misconception I have been hearing lately, I don't know where it came from but it is total BS.OverThrottle said:
Really? Now I am really confused. I had always assumed hollow was used more often simply for weight and cost savings. I know that a thick guage is stronger then a thinner one of the same OD. If hollow truly is stronger then solid, than at some point, the my statement would have to be false. At what point would a thinner wall be stronger than a thicker?
I guess I am going to have to invest some time into reading up on mechanical engineering. The more I hear, the less sense it seems to make!
"Stronger" just gets tossed around too much. Rarely will the force in which a certian part is "stronger", will be mentioned.OverThrottle said:
Really? Now I am really confused. I had always assumed hollow was used more often simply for weight and cost savings. I know that a thick guage is stronger then a thinner one of the same OD. If hollow truly is stronger then solid, than at some point, the my statement would have to be false. At what point would a thinner wall be stronger than a thicker?
I guess I am going to have to invest some time into reading up on mechanical engineering. The more I hear, the less sense it seems to make!
Roughly for solid vs tube, tube is "stronger" per unit of weight
As for getting your ME, there are lots of E's on this board, but only a handful that can properly apply what they learned in the text book, to real world apps. I got a ME sitting 10 feet from me now, that looked at a ball check-valve for 45 minutes before he figured out how it works. He could check his text, and run some equations, but not really have any fawking idea what it means..besides being a number on the paper.
Guess I am saying, take everything you see on here with a grain of salt.
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Ok, I am not a mechaical engineer (though I did go to school to become an electronics engineer), but I think I may be able to explain how that misconception may have started after I did a little web searching.GOAT1 said:
I think saying something is simply "stronger" is way too ambigious. I found a manufactuer on the web that produces colummns, and from reading their strength formulas. It looks like in a column situation (where the only load is straight down on the crossection of the tube) hollow is indeed stronger then solid, OF THE SAME MASS, meaning that the same amount of material is used. If you had a hollow and solid of the same diameter, then the solid would be much stronger. If you were use the same mass to produce the both the hollow and the solid then the hollow would be much stronger, due to its larger OD. The too biggest factors in a a COLUMN is the length (longer is weaker, more likely to buckle), and the diameter (larger diameter helps reduce buckle). I am not sure how much of this would tranfer over to other types of loads, which are more common to our application, but I imagine some of it would.
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LAME said:
"Stronger" just gets tossed around too much. Rarely will the force in which a certian part is "stronger", will be mentioned.
Roughly for solid vs tube, tube is "stronger" per unit of weight
As for getting your ME, there are lots of E's on this board, but only a handful that can properly apply what they learned in the text book, to real world apps. I got a ME sitting 10 feet from me now, that looked at a ball check-valve for 45 minutes before he figured out how it works. He could check his text, and run some equations, but not really have any fawking idea what it means..besides being a number on the paper.
Guess I am saying, take everything you see on here with a grain of salt.
You beat me to it by 2 minutes I wasn't trying to rephrase ya, I guess your just a faster typer
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"Stronger" does get tossed around too much, every one has their own definition of "Stronger". If you want to compare stronger per unit weight, aircraft grade spruce (yes wood!) is stronger than 1020 CR mild steel, and 7075-T6 aluminum is 3 times stronger that mild steel, carbon fiber, almost 12 times stronger than mild steel, but this is only part of the picture. When comparing the same dimeter solid vs tube, the solid will always be stronger than tube, no matter how you load it, tension, compression, torsion, bending. You can make tube stronger than solid, but like someone mentioned before, you have to make it bigger.
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Where did you hear that posted/said by someone respectable whom has some knowledge?Starslope said:
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