RMT Basics, page 22

Change Your Shape to Relieve Stress

The beam too relies on the inherent stiffness of its material components, but it must rely disproportionately on the portion in its bottom center where geometry and leverage conspire to cause tension to concentrate. The beam is handicapped by this intrinsic inefficiency which grossly underutilizes the majority of its mass.

The arch is more efficient because, unlike the beam, its geometry causes stress to be distributed fairly equally throughout and so most of its mass is employed to resist stress with relative uniformity.

In this sense, the arch is the triumph of re-engineering which takes the beam apart and puts the pieces together in a new and more powerful combination, according to a new geometric model.

The basic lesson of this brief history is:

To change the way the stresses of load are resolved in a structure, change its geometry.

Please remember this, because RMT is rooted in this fundamental law.