Normal stress

10/08/16

“What happens when stress acts upon an area parallel to the axis of an object?”
The concept of stress is one of the premier foundations of all of engineering science. So, what happens when a stress is applied to an area that is parallel to the axis of the object? Well, this type of action is very simple. Since all of the stress acts through the axis of an object, the only deformations will be parallel to the axis as well. This type of stress would cause tensile or compressive deformations (depending on the direction and strength of materials). Scientists and Engineers have termed this phenomena normal stress. You can find the magnitude of normal stress very simply, as the stress is just the force distributed over the area that it is acting upon (we can represent this symbolically with the equation (sigma)=F/A, with being (sigma) the stress, F being the force, and A being the geometric area)