Formula Of Iron Lady
The tall, graceful iron lady stands with shimmering lights, like a Goddess watching over people, making it a place of love, happiness, and togetherness. The iron lady creates memories for many… Some capture them in their digital storage, while others lock them in their mind’s camera. But, no one has ever returned without making a memory with the iron lady - with the very distinguished Eiffel Tower.
It was built to be one of the main attractions of the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. That year, the World's Fair covered the entire Champ de Mars in Paris and its focus was the vast constructions in iron and steel that were the great industrial advancement of that time.
Initially it was referred to as the 300 - meter Tower, but later it was named after the man who built it, Gustave Eiffel. According to record, it took 2 years, 2 months and 5 days to build the work of art.
The project included 50 engineers and designers (who produced 5,300 blueprints), 100 ironworkers (who produced 18,038 individual pieces for assembly), and 121 construction workers (who used 2.5 million rivets).
It was the first tower to reach 300 meters, the nearest metric equivalent to 1000 feet, touching the sky. While building it, Gustave Eiffel had to keep in mind about the concept of wind resistance. He also had to make sure the giant stands tall till eternity, hence put curves on the outer edges. At the base, four curved pillars tilt inward at an angle of 54 degree.
The structural towers can be well divided into two groups, columns which are designed to primarily resist dead loads, and cantilevers, which are designed to primarily resist wind loads. This distinction can be made mathematically by the following relation:
It is the ratio of the axial forces created by the dead load (NG) and the wind load (NW), and is used to determine how well a structure’s design accounts for wind loads.
It involves a rather complex calculation of geometry and the widths of the tower corresponding to their heights can be calculated by parabola, which can be considered as the shape of the tower.
The tower’s total height is 984 feet which can be segregated into different platforms - the first one/ bottom section which is 380 feet, the middle one is 264 feet, and the top section is 340 feet.
One of the key factors for Eiffel was determining the tangents, running from the horizontal sections of the tower, and in the end intersecting in the wind forces.
It is said that the tower was not designed based on any particular mathematical formula rather his engineers depended on graphical results to support the weight and experimental evidence to estimate the effects of the wind forces.
The Lady still maintains her charm and puts a spell of art in that city. Its lights are turned off at night to honour the victims of tragic events around the globe.