Beam stiffening

Beam stiffening, splinting, enhancing, reinforcing, repairing, strengthening, bringing in anti-buckling, stopping bending, discouraging wrinkling, bracing, etc.. The beams may be fluid beams, rigid beams, hybrid beams. The beams may be of any shape, size, or material.  How humans stiffen beams is the focus of this folder.

• Rigging superstructures about the base beam
• Rigging interior substructures in the base beam
• Splinting by appliqué
• Splinting by ties in various patterns (one ancient method: compression element tied snug to fluid beam by various cable-fastening patterns; the trademark Tensairity® actually is capitalizing on an ancient well-known art with addition of some details of interest.)
• Straightening base beams
• Captive column tactics within the base beam
• Pressure from inside the base beam.   Ram-air into air beams is an "inside" tactic.
• Pressure from outside the base beam (partial or full surround). Aerodynamic shapes that lower the pressure from the outside of an airbeam is one tactic.  
• Base-beam surface treatments (painting, cladding, polishing, smoothing, crack filling, whipping, ...)
• Base-beam chemical treatments
• Base-beam work-hardening.
• Damping vibrations
• Cooling
• Bloating
• Swelling
• Drying
• Base design strategies for the beam itself (burying rebar, embedding pultruded elements, organizing domains, ...)
• Strain stiffening.
• Stress stiffening.
• Tensioning the base beam (pull the beam's ends). 
• Tension stiffening.
• Centrifugal stiffening of a beam.
• Combinations of the above methods (two at a time, three at a time, etc., over part or all of the base beam) (Any two, any three, any four, any five, any six, etc. of the means in one application)

In mechanics, "stiffening" beams brings anti-buckling, anti-wrinkling, desired shaping, reinforcement, repair, strength, enhanced function, extended utility. longer beam life, safety, etc. Stiffening of fluid or rigid beams is used in medical arts, aerospace, aviation, sports, bookbinding, art, architecture, natural plants and trees, construction industry, bridge building^[1], and more. Mechanical methods for stiffening include tension stiffening^[2], centrifugal stiffening ^[3], bracing, superstructure bracing, substructure bracing, straightening, strain stiffening, stress stiffening^[4], damping vibrations, swelling, pressure increasing, drying, cooling, interior reinforcing, exterior reinforcing, wrapping, surface treating, or combinations of these and other methods. Beams under bending loads or compression invite stiffening to stop buckling or collapse while fulfilling desired functions, purposes, and benefits.

• http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=AD0736044 The buckling of stiffened and unstiffened shell structures by Josef Singer, TAE Report No. 139, October 1971
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• Beam theory
• Buckling
• Earthquake engineering
• Finite element method in structural mechanics
• Plates and shells
• Torsion
• Trusses
• Stiffening
• Structural dynamics
• Structural instability
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beam_(structure)

• bending
• bending stiffness
• wiki/Bending_moment
• Bending moment at a section
• sagging bending
• hogging bending
• Calculator for moment of inertia
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