Newton's laws of motion

The most important natural laws for structural engineering are Newton's Laws of Motion. Newton's first law states that every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed. Newton's second law states that the rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction. Mathematically, F=ma (force = mass x acceleration). Newton's third law states that all forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. With these laws it is possible to understand the forces on a structure and how that structure will resist them. The Third Law requires that for a structure to be stable all the internal and external forces must be in equilibrium. This means that the sum of all internal and external forces on a free-body diagram must be zero:

: the vectorial sum of the forces acting on the body equals zero. This translates to

Σ H = 0: the sum of the horizontal components of the forces equals zero;

Σ V = 0: the sum of the vertical components of forces equals zero;

: the sum of the moments (about an arbitrary point) of all forces equals zero.