Free Body Diagram (FBD)

Sketching Free Body Diagrams (FBDs) is probably one of the most important skill you can acquire as an engineer.   Believe it or not, solving most engineering problems begin with a FBD.

To use the equation of equilibrium we must be aware of all the forces acting on the object.  If you're dealing with one or two forces then maybe it's easy to just visualize your problem but more often than not we are looking at problems with many many forces (well not that many) so it is best to put pen to paper.

These are the simple steps of producing an Free Body Diagram

1. The best way to start a FBD is to sketch the object we are analyzing in such a way that it is isolated from its surrounding.  
2. Once you have an outline you can start inserting all the known and unknown forces acting on the object.
3. Lastly, all the forces identified should be labeled.

• Known forces are labeled with its magnitude and direction
• As for unknown forces, its magnitudes are represented by alphabets while it's direction can be directed randomly (upon solving the problem, it's true direction will become known)

That's it for this post, stay tuned for my next post when I show you some Free Body Diagram sketching examples.