Statics

Statics is the branch of mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of loads (force and torque, or "moment") acting on physical systems that do not experience an acceleration (a=0), but rather, are in static equilibrium with their environment. When in static equilibrium, the acceleration of the system is zero and the system is either at rest, or its center of mass moves at constant velocity. The application of Newton's second law to a system gives:

Where bold font indicates a vector that has magnitude and direction. F is the total of the forces acting on the system, m is the mass of the system and a is the acceleration of the system. The summation of forces will give the direction and the magnitude of the acceleration will be inversely proportional to the mass. The assumption of static equilibrium of a = 0 leads to:

The summation of forces, one of which might be unknown, allows that unknown to be found. Likewise the application of the assumption of zero acceleration to the summation of moments acting on the system leads to: