If yes… how??
I’m currently in the process of hanging some furniture onto drywalls and was wondering about the claims on dry wall anchors to hold so-and-so amount of weight. Could someone explain to me the physics behind these things? I don’t get how dry wall anchors can claim this.
Doesn’t gravity and the quality/sturdiness of the wall and the thickness of the walls be what determines the weight capacity hanging on a point in the wall? How does putting a drywall anchor help other than preventing direct contact of the screw with the wall? I understand you would like to protect the hole in the wall from the sharp edges of a screw but do drywall anchors also ease the load off of whatever is hanging on it?
Tldr; would like to know the physics behind how drywall anchors.
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Material strength is about pressure not force, if you’ve got a 50 lb force on a small area it can easy punch through drywall, but if you spread that out over a much larger area the drywall can hold it without issue
Anchors are all about getting more material in contact with the drywall to increase the area the force is applied over and therefore reduce the pressure on the wall
If you just put a #6 screw in the wall then the load you put on the end of it is trying to tilt it upwards in the wall. This puts all the load over an area that’s just 0.138″ (screw diameter) x 0.5″ (drywall thickness). With a 50 pound load that’s 724 psi and some sad drywall
If you use one of the big old screw anchors it results in the load being over an area that’s closer to 0.5″ x 0.5″ so now that 50 pounds is down to 200 psi
If you use one of the big ol’ toggler anchors now you’ve got a contact area closer to 0.5″ x 2″ because its just a plate on the back of the wall. Now you’re down to just 50 psi
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