Could you build a water tower that is a cube to be as effective or more as one that is a cylinder?
In: 2
It’s not that it changes, it’s that a cube has more weak points, each seem where the sides meet is a potential fault line.
Water pressure does not change based on shape, but shape does affect stress in solids. For a given height, water pressure in a tower would be the same regardless of the shape of the tower, but when you apply that pressure to the walls of the tower, stress within that material is concentrated at any corners. This is also why airplanes have round windows.
Water pressure depends only on height, nothing more.
Round shapes don’t have weakpoints and are structurally better than anything else.
This is the reason for shape of water towers… And almost any other construction
In a water tower, the pressure is determined by height.
A circular cross section will let you store more water with the same amount of material, partially because it minimizes surface area per unit volume, but mostly because you eliminate the extra forces caused by the water trying to bend a flat wall outward, the wall is already bent outward so the pressure just loads it in tension.
It doesn’t. Unless it’s being pressurised by a mechanical device, Water pressure = the density of water x the height of the water column x gravity (9.8m/s^2).
Latest Answers