Why do ships have cicular windows,why not square ones?
In: Physics
In stress analysis a popular term is “stress concentration”. If you apply load to a square and a circular shape, calculate stress you’ll see the sharp corners in a square have the highest stresses. We try to avoid sharp changes in corners as much as possible due to this and a circular object is the best possible answer with no sharp corners.
A ductile material like steel may deform a bit due to stress concentration but a brittle material like glass will simply just break if the stress is more than the material limit. Even ductile materials will fail over time due to fatigue if the load is cyclic , so where possible sharp corners are avoided.
Latest Answers