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galbarium
Ec(h)ocardiography, Ec(h)ocardiogram
Dec 8, 2004 11:54
20 yrs ago
English term

opposite of funicular

English Tech/Engineering Construction / Civil Engineering Structural analysis
Dear Proz,

I am translating a paper from Spanish on structural analysis involved with funiculars and catenaries. An important part of this revolves around, literally "anti-funiclar" or "non-funicular" nets/networks. The matter is that I just cannot seem to find an adequate opposite for "funicular". Here is an excerpt with the unstranslated term within context:



The lack of references found (which include a couple in Kudoz), make me doubt the adequacy of the terms "non-funicular" and "antifunicular" and I am under the impression that the English equivalent might be a completely unrelated word.

I have copied and pasted some simple definitions from the web hoping they may be of help.




Thank you for your help and my apologies for the extended reading.

Álvaro :O) :O)
Responses
4 +2 non-funicular, not funicular etc.
4 antifunicular
3 check out 'inverted catenary'
3 inverted funicular

Discussion

Richard Benham Dec 8, 2004:
...actually what a lot of those sites (Spanish, Portugese, British and Australian) are calling an "antifunicular". So, if you don't like "antifunicular", you can always call it a funicular. I suspect our American friends must do this.
Richard Benham Dec 8, 2004:
Hello. As I have often said, one credible reference is worth more than hundreds of thousands you haven't checked. Anyway, you seem to be forgetting that even one of the definitions you quote refers to an arch following a "funicular"--but this is
Non-ProZ.com Dec 8, 2004:
Take a closer look Thank you Richard. I completely agree regarding magic numbers. But if you take a closer look, you will see that about 95% of those hits are Spanish or Portuguese websites, either written or translated from those languages. I have only spotted about 3 or 4 from the UK or Australia and frankly, given Spain, Portugal and Argentina's track record for research, it still seems hard to believe that British or US engineers to not use another term. :O)

Responses

+2
1 day 1 hr
Selected

non-funicular, not funicular etc.

The term you need is not an opposite term but a word which explains that your object is not funicular. Therefore, you may use "not funicular" if this appears rarely and even "non-funicular" if you DEFINE this concept somewhere within the paper's translation.
Please see:
Structural Idealisation: a PDF doc at http://emulava.fbe.unsw.edu.au:8080/ downloads/pdf/struct-ideal.pdf
also
shapingstructures.com/overview.html
courses.arch.hku.hk/bss/01-02/students/ IBM%20PAVILION%20web%20page/struc01.htm
Also some arguing on ProZ :)
muybueno.proz.com/kudoz/193747 (non-funicular/unbalanced loading, Nikki Graham)
and
www.brantacan.co.uk/keystones.htm
Now: Funicular Compression Structures
... A loading that does not corrpespond to the arch's funicular profile will be called a non-funicular loading or unbalanced loading. ...
www.arch.virginia.edu/~km6e/ arch324/content/lectures/lec-23/pres.html

Arch 324/524 Course Description ... Funicular compression structures. Three-hinged arches and 19th Century methods of analysis. Arch structures subjected to non-funicular loadings. ...
urban.arch.virginia.edu/~km6e/ arch324/content/course-desc.html

I am not saying about another way i.e., the applying if the term "non-catenary" (more close to purely mathematical terms): please see
_____ and David F. Anderson, "Non-catenary Factorial Domains", Communications in Algebra, Vol. 17, No. ...
>>>
www.math.utk.edu/~mulay/cv.html

and

www.ams.org/proc/1999-127-12/ S0002-9939-99-04962-X/home.html
... Finally, we provide several examples to explain our assumptions as well as an example of a noncatenary, equidimensional local domain R with prime ideal p such ...
www.math.utah.edu/~sather/mdium.ps (fine is in PostScript format which can be converted to a PDF)
Non-catenary pseudo-geometric normal rings. ...
www.math.purdue.edu/~heinzer/preprints/cat26.ps
In Modern Algebra, these terms are usually related to specific rings with some additional properties (see also AMS site and the list of math topics there).
Conclusions: in mechanical and other papers they would use the term "non-funicular", while in math the term "noncatenary" or "non-catenary" is preferible for description of specific domains and sets with algebraic structures.
Yours,
Tagir.

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Note added at 1 day 1 hr 19 mins (2004-12-09 13:13:58 GMT)
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A small note about Google results:): Typing \"Cetificate\" brings you some 11+ thousand links but all of them simply contain this mistyped word:) I think this is due to the fact that proper typing \"Certificate\" results in more than 44 million links... Ratio is funny!
Yours
T.
Peer comment(s):
agree Angela Dickson (X) : comprehensive. Agree that Google hits mean little if they are all bad translations.
242 days
agree Robert Donahue (X)
243 days
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Graded automatically based on peer agreement."
10 mins

antifunicular

I don't know what more you could want. There are only 62 Google hits, but at least a handful of them are entirely relevant and credible. So what's your problem? You don't think there's some magic minimum number of Googlies before you can use a term, do you?
Something went wrong...
1 hr

check out 'inverted catenary'

unless there is a differentiation in your text between what is catenary and what is funicular - catenary curves are generally considered synonymous to funicular curves. (This was supposed to be Gaudi's structural plan for the Sagrada Familia.)
Peer comment(s):
neutral Richard Benham : I think it's a bit more complicated. I think the idea is that the *compressive* forces are all longitudinal. I'll look at it, though.//Looks like you've got something, but my understanding is that a catenary is only one example of a funicluar curve.
59 mins
Something went wrong...
3 hrs

inverted funicular

While this is similar to the other answer, Heyman used to put catenaries onto pictures of arches. When they coincided, the structures were sound. As the arches went low-high-low and catenaries (with rope) went high-low-high, you had to invert one to match it to the other.

This link states:
"By natural law, an inverted funicular tension geometry will automatically produce a pure funiclar compression shell geometry."

They are talking of concrete shells in the paper.


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Note added at 3 hrs 48 mins (2004-12-08 15:42:45 GMT)
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Also see this for some on Heyman

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1169.htm
Reference:

http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/architecture/cast/pdf_downloads/3_pr.pdf

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