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Student Guide 55-57 PDF
Student Guide 55-57 PDF
Consistent Units
This chapter includes material from the book Practical Finite Element Analysis. It also has been
reviewed and has additional material added by Gareth Lee and Sascha Beuermann.
Numerous errors in engineering calculations can be attributed to the careless use of units. To avoid
errors follow these basic rules:
x
x
Develop a sense of the physical reality of the units being used and think in terms of those
units.
x
Always apply the test of reasonableness to input and output quantities. If a number
appears to be out of the expected range, it probably is.
x
Be particularly careful when using someone elses work. They may have used a conversion
factor but failed to clearly document it.
x
Most general purpose analysis codes have no built-in knowledge of units, making unit consistency
your responsibility.
The fundamental units of measure used in structural analysis are:
x
Mass
x
Length
x
Time
x
Temperature
All other units are based on these fundamental units. Nowadays the International System of Units
(SI) is used generally to mark the dimension unit.
A consistent set of base and derived units, commonly used in engineering, is given in the following
table:
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Quantity
Symbol
Dimension
SI-System
(MKS)
System mm-t-s
Unit
Mult.
Length
mm
103
mm
Mass
kg
t (tonne)
10-3
kg
Time
ms
103
Temperature
degrees
Work, Energy
W, E
ML2T-2
+/N8tT
mJ
103
Acceleration
LT-2
NtT-2
NNtT-2
103
NNtNT-2
10-3
Area
L2
m2
mm2
106
mm2
106
Frequency
T-1
Hz=s-1
Hz=s-1
ms-1
10-3
Velocity
LT-1
NtT-2
mm*s-1
103
NNtNT-1
Volume
L3
m3
mm3
109
mm3
Angular
Acceleration
T-2
SBEtT-2=s-2
SBEtT-2=s-2
SBEtNT-2=ms-2 10-6
Angular
Velocity
T-1
SBEtT-1=s-1
SBEtT-1=s-1
SBEtNT-1=ms-1 10-3
Density
ML-3
LHtN-3
UtNN-3
Pressure,
Stress,
Youngs
Modulus
pV
WE
ML-1T-2
1B/tN-2
.1B/tNN-2 10-6
(1BL/tNN2 10-9
Force
MLT-2
/LHtNtT-2
kN
Moment
ML2T-2
/tN
/tNN3
L/tNN
Stiffness
MT-2
/tN-1
/tNN-1
L/tNN-1
10-12
10-3
System mm-kg-ms
Unit
Mult.
103
LHtNN3
1
109
10-9
10-3
10-6
The given conversion multipliers (Mult.) are valid for conversion from the SI-System to the given
system.
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Solve scaled down versions of the larger problems you are working on.