Engineering Topics

Glenn Frazee Glenn Frazee

Kazinczy’s 1914 Beam Experiments and the Beginnings of Plastic Design

In 1914, Gábor Kazinczy described beam experiments that revealed a key principle of structural engineering: local yielding does not necessarily mean structural collapse. His explanation anticipated concepts now central to plastic design, moment redistribution, and ductile structural behavior. I’ve translated his paper into English and discuss what these century-old experiments can still teach us.

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