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In physics and engineering, a resultant force is the single force and associated torque obtained by combining a system of forces and torques acting on a rigid body via vector addition. The defining feature of a resultant force, or resultant force-torque, is that it has the same effect on the rigid body as the original system of forces. [1]
In physics, a force is considered a vector quantity. This means that it not only has a size (or magnitude) but also a direction in which it acts. We typically represent force with the symbol F in boldface, or sometimes, we place an arrow over the symbol to indicate its vector nature, like this: .
To graphically determine the resultant force of multiple forces, the acting forces can be arranged as edges of a polygon by attaching the beginning of one force vector to the end of another in an arbitrary order. Then the vector value of the resultant force would be determined by the missing edge of the polygon. [2]
When two forces act on a point particle, the resulting force, the resultant (also called the net force), can be determined by following the parallelogram rule of vector addition: the addition of two vectors represented by sides of a parallelogram, gives an equivalent resultant vector that is equal in magnitude and direction to the transversal ...
The resulting vector is sometimes called the resultant vector of a and b. The addition may be represented graphically by placing the tail of the arrow b at the head of the arrow a, and then drawing an arrow from the tail of a to the head of b. The new arrow drawn represents the vector a + b, as illustrated below: [7] The addition of two vectors ...
In other words, a couple, unlike any more general moments, is a "free vector". (This fact is called Varignon 's Second Moment Theorem .) [ 2 ] The proof of this claim is as follows: Suppose there are a set of force vectors F 1 , F 2 , etc. that form a couple, with position vectors (about some origin P ), r 1 , r 2 , etc., respectively.
In three dimensions, the torque is a pseudovector; for point particles, it is given by the cross product of the displacement vector and the force vector. The direction of the torque can be determined by using the right hand grip rule : if the fingers of the right hand are curled from the direction of the lever arm to the direction of the force ...
Figure 1: Parallelogram construction for adding vectors. This construction has the same result as moving F 2 so its tail coincides with the head of F 1, and taking the net force as the vector joining the tail of F 1 to the head of F 2. This procedure can be repeated to add F 3 to the resultant F 1 + F 2, and so forth.