[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by kramarczyk

Point being that mass is not generally involved in beam bending calculations unless it contributes a significant amount to the actual load. Additionally, the strength of the beam increases at the cube of the height of the beam, so doubling the beam depth increases the bending resistance by 8x. [/url]

I've confessed in these pages before that I am not an ME, so treat this as a question rather than an argument, please.

Is the "strength" of the beam the same as "bending resistance?" I read in Dave Gerr's book on boat design that the stiffness (which I would think is the same as bending resistance) of a beam, all else being equal, goes up with the fourth power of thickness, not the third power. Of course, the failure strength might go up as the third power -- about this I know nothing.