Axial Stress

Fig. 1: Axial Force acting on a wood, concrete, and steel column

Axial Stress (aka compressive stress, tensile stress) is a measure of the axial force acting on a beam quantitatively measuring the internal forces acting within in the beam. Compressive stress means the member is in compression (being smashed) vs. tensile stress which means the beam is in tension (being pulled apart).

A couple of important things to note about axial stress are:

• Excluding the selfweight of the beam, the axial stress in a column with no external loads is constant (see Figure 2)
• Except for concrete, tensile forces will normally have greater capacities than compressive forces (think of trying to pull a Popsicle stick apart vs stepping on it and breaking it through compression).
• Axial stress will commonly be used when analyzing columns.

How to Calculate the Axial Stress in a member:

where:

Calculating the Allowable Axial Stress for a Member

Fig. 1: Axial Stress in a column is constant (excludes self-weight)

Calculating the axial capacity of a member is all based on the type of material you're working with (and also often dependent on the shape you're using). Concrete has many different ways to design it's columns for compression depending on the length, the type of reinforcing, the amount of flexural stress in the column, etc. Wood uses a bunch of factors to solve for a column's capacity. Since solving for the axial capacity of a beam can be rather complicated, as an example i've detailed the easiest method (wood) below. One reason it's easy imho is because there is an accompanying spreadsheet to do most of the work (always a plus)

For a wooden column:

All the variables can be found here in greater detail. As you can see even solving for wood is rather complicated.

Example #1

You have a simply supported wooden 8x8 wooden column supporting a ±5 kip load. What is the maximum axial stress (both compressive and tensile) on the column if the column is 12'-0" tall?

1) Find the area of the wooden column (remember to use actual sizes)

A = 7.5" x 7.5" = 56.25 in^2

2) Find the Maximum axial force acting on the column

P_{c} = DL + LL = 12'-0" * 56.25/144 * 35 \frac{lbs}{ft^3} + 5,000 lbs = 5,164 lbs

P_{t} = LL-DL = 5,000 lbs - \left(12'-0" * 56.25/144 * 35 \frac{lbs}{ft^3}\right) = 4,836 lbs

3) Solve for the tensile/compressive force acting on the beam:

f_c =\frac{P_c}{A} = \frac{5,164 lbs}{56.25 in^2} = 91.8 psi

f_t =\frac{P_t}{A} = \frac{4,836 lbs}{56.25 in^2} = 86.0 psi

Note: Don't forget to add in the selfweight of the beam.

Example #2