Yes, I know it might not be practical to do this without errors and there’s reasons like running utilities through and quality control with inexperienced workers, but technically speaking, could you make stronger structures with less materials using stronger structural shapes? Maybe it’s just more pleasing to our eyes everything being straight and square and such, but what about utility canopies and tents where you want to have your structural members as light and portable as possible? Why do we not have tetrahedron shaped tents that have 3 small, collapsible, yet rigid poles and a firing they go in at the top instead of having long flexible ones?
In: Engineering
The purpose of joists is to carry the weight to the ends, not to keep the floor square, that is done by the subfloor that goes on top of the joists, and you kinda still need that even if you have diagonal joists, because that’s what transfers the weight from your foot to the joist. Beam deflection is related to the cube of length. So to carry the same load you’d have to make it much stronger.
Now, that’s not to say stronger shapes don’t exist. You often see wooden joists in the shape of an I beam, putting more material where it matters for the loads a joist carries.
>Why do we not have tetrahedron shaped tents that have 3 small, collapsible, yet rigid poles and a firing they go in at the top instead of having long flexible ones?
Because the goal isn’t to make the tent as strong as possible inside a given weight, it’s to have as much usable space as possible inside a given weight.
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