Branch of mechanical engineering
Statics & Dynamics
The oldest branch: where forces come from, how they balance, and what happens when they don't.
← Back to the latticeWhat it studies
Statics handles things that hold still — free-body diagrams, equilibrium, reaction forces. It answers the first question of every design: what loads does each part actually carry? Dynamics takes over when things move: F = m·a, momentum, vibration, impact.
Everything downstream — beam sizing, laminate loads, fatigue cycles — starts with a statics or dynamics analysis that sets the numbers you feed into our calculators as Nx, P, or p.
Key ideas
free-body diagrams and equilibrium (ΣF = 0, ΣM = 0)Newton's three lawsmoments, levers, and load pathsvibration: stiffness + mass = natural frequencyimpact and momentum
Work in this branch on mpolyco
Go further (open resources)
More in the library · licenses on the acknowledgements page.