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A pound-foot (lb⋅ft), abbreviated from pound-force foot (lbf · ft), is a unit of torque representing one pound of force acting at a perpendicular distance of one foot from a pivot point. [2] Conversely one foot pound-force (ft · lbf) is the moment about an axis that applies one pound-force at a radius of one foot.
In the US, torque is most commonly referred to as the foot-pound (denoted as either lb-ft or ft-lb) and the inch-pound (denoted as in-lb). [ 17 ] [ 18 ] Practitioners depend on context and the hyphen in the abbreviation to know that these refer to torque and not to energy or moment of mass (as the symbolism ft-lb would properly imply).
The pound per square inch (abbreviation: psi) or, more accurately, pound-force per square inch (symbol: lbf/in 2), [1] is a unit of measurement of pressure or of stress based on avoirdupois units and used primarily in the United States. It is the pressure resulting from a force with magnitude of one pound-force applied to an area of one square ...
Both energy and torque can be expressed as a product of a force vector with a displacement vector (hence pounds and feet); energy is the scalar product of the two, and torque is the vector product. Although calling the torque unit "pound-foot" has been academically suggested, both are still commonly called "foot-pound" in colloquial usage.
In some contexts, the term "pound" is used almost exclusively to refer to the unit of force and not the unit of mass. In those applications, the preferred unit of mass is the slug, i.e. lbf⋅s 2 /ft. In other contexts, the unit "pound" refers to a unit of mass. The international standard symbol for the pound as a unit of mass is lb. [8]
The avoirdupois pound is legally defined as a measure of mass, [25] but the name pound is also applied to measures of force. For instance, in many contexts, the pound avoirdupois is used as a unit of mass, but in some contexts, the term "pound" is used to refer to "pound-force". The slug is another unit of mass derived from pound-force.
The obsolete troy pound was divided into 12 ounces, rather than the 16 ounces per pound of the avoirdupois system. The apothecaries' system was traditionally used in pharmacology, but has now been replaced by the metric system; it shared the same pound and ounce as the troy system but with different further subdivisions.
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in both the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement.Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces. [1]