This Is So Civil Engineeringly Geek You Won't Believe it!!

Displacements. Displacements are driving me nuts. I'm hoping some civil engineer will read this and help me solve this: I have a tied-back wall, with active and passive and all sort of loadings already figured out. I even have the moment curve, but it is not generated by a linear loading condition --> I can't integrate twice and get the displacements!!

Anyway, the bottom line is, my frustration is spilling. Have you ever faced a problem you think you have solved a zillion times, and you can't just come up with the right solution??? This is the way I feel- I WANNA PULL OUT MY HAIR ONE BY ONE!!!

an email to Troy...

"Okay, this is driving me nuts, it's like a riddle I know I used to be able to solve and now I'm blanking. My nth attempt to solve via the equation of the elastic line (the second derivative of the displacement is equal to minus M(x)/EI) is not proving fruitful. It won't work in a nice elegant way. I mean, I can always crank in the number and get the solution for this specific case, but it won't be a generalized method to do so.

SO- the virtual works method. I have banged my head on my school notes, the only way I've ever applied it was to find reactions in statically undetermined structures, rather than by finding displacements. I guess it shouldn't be a big deal to force it to spit it out a displacement instead, but I CAN'T THINK OF A WAY TO RELEASE A RESTRAINT! I need the displacement at a generic point along the wall, and I am still afraid I can use it at a certain location, but not as a generalized equation for future use. It's just driving me nuts.

I'm sure you'll come up with a beautiful and elegant solutions that will make me think I have lost all my neurons on the way to California, and I will just curse myself for not thinking about it before you.

And by the way, I'm SO blogging this!!!

:)"

well, today was engineering day! :)