Free Body Diagram

A free body diagram, sometimes called a force diagram, is a pictorial device, often a rough working sketch, used by engineers and physicists to analyze the forces and moments acting on a body. The body itself may consist of multiple components, an automobile for example, or just a part of a component, a short section of a beam for example, anything in fact that may be considered to act as a single body, if only for a moment. A whole series of such diagrams may be necessary to analyze forces in a complex problem. The free body in a free body diagram is not free of constraints, it is just that the constraints have been replaced by arrows representing the forces and moments they generate.

Read more about Free Body Diagram:  Purpose, Construction, Example: A Block On An Inclined Plane

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