| Zirconium | (english) Silvery-white, metallic element, mp 1860 B0C (3380 B0F), a powerful deoxidizer when added to molten steel. |
| Axial force: | (english) A system of internal forces whose resultant is a force acting along the longitudinal axis of a structural member or assembly. |
| Body force: | (english) An external force acting throughout the mass of a body. Gravity is a body force. An inertial force is a body force. |
| Brittle: | (english) A brittle structure or material exhibits low ductility, meaning that it exhibits very little inelastic deformation before complete failure. |
| Centroid: | (english) Similar to the concept of center of gravity, except that it applies to a two dimensional shape rather than an object. For a given shape, the centroid location corresponds to the center of gravity for a thin flat plate of that shape, made from a homogeneous material. |
| Component (of a vector): | (english) Any vector can be expressed as a collection of vectors whose sum is equal to the original vector. Each vector in this collection is a component of the original vector. It is common to express a vector in terms of components which are parallel to the x and y axes. |
| Connection: | (english) Connection is similar to the concept of support, except that connection refers to a relationship between members in a structural model. A connection restrains degrees of freedom of one member with respect to another. For each restrained degree of freedom, there is a corresponding force transferred from one member to the other; forces associated with unrestrained degrees of freedom are zero. See fixed connection and pin connection. |
| Degree of Freedom: | (english) A displacement quantity which defines the shape and location of an object. In the two dimensional plane, a rigid object has three degrees of freedom: two translations and one rotation. In three dimensional space, a rigid object has six degrees of freedom (three translations and three rotations). |
| Distributed load: | (english) An external force which acts over a region of length, surface, or area: essentially any external force which is not a concentrated force. |
| Ductility: | (english) Ductility generally refers to the amount of inelastic deformation which a material or structure experiences before complete failure. Quantitatively, ductility can be defined as the ratio of the total displacement or strain at failure, divided by the displacement or strain at the elastic limit. |