Question

A perfectly, vertically-stacked deck of cards tilted to one side illustrates which stress between each card?

a. Compression

b. Tension

c. Shear

d. None of these

Answer 1

When the cards are perfectly stacked vertically, it is compressional stresses on the vertical cards and tensile stresses on the horizontal cards that enables the stack to stand erect, when the forces are within limits.

However as the vertical stack is tilted to a particular direction, there is component of the stresses, that act coplanar to the intitally-horizontal cards, this results in a shear Stress. Thus in the case of a tilted vertical stack of cards, there is a component of parallel and opposite stresses acting on each card, hence Shear Stress.

Vertically Stacked Cards

Tilted cards, in which the resultant of the perpendicular Stresses, result in a component parallel to each other, thus leading to simple shearing across each other.