Not aviation, but an engineering problem anyway
 

I'v got a crate that's about ten feet long, three wide and five deep. I'm moving it to storage, and will be visiting the storage facility next week. My querstion is, how wide do the hallways have to be in order to move this crate around 90-degree corners without tipping it on end?

Many thanks in advance

Bing

6 foot wide corridors is the smallest you'll get away with.

p.s. That's the theoretical ideal, might need an extra couple of inches to stop it getting jammed or scraping the walls ;)

When solving such problems, there's no substitute for a pad of graphpaper and a pair of scissors - you can cut things out and play painlessly to your heart's content.

It's how most hangar layouts get worked out, and I've seen a few people design aeroplanes like that as well.

G

Shouldn't you be thinking "how long should my crate be in order to fit it in the already existing corridors" ??

No Wizzo, the crate is a fixed size, if it doesn't fit, I'll have to find somewhere else to store it.

Thanks G, will try the paper/scissor ploy.

ukeng, what formula did you use to come up with your answer?

If you think of the box pivoting round the 90 deg bend at the middle, the longest bit will be from the middle of the side nearest the bend to the opposite corner.
A bit of maths (Right angled triangle) a²+b²=c²
With one side of the triangle 5 ft the other side 3ft the longest must be 6ft!
(25+9=36)

Or you could do it the easy way a la Genghis and just cut it out of paper...:rolleyes: :ok:


Send me a PM if you still don't get my ramblings.

I'm with Genghis on this one...

Use a compass instead of a scissors and add 10% to the turn radius

:ok:

I make the corridor 5.8 feet wide. the maximum distance has to be the length from the midway point of one side of the box to the opposite corner. That will be the arc as it pivots around the corner.

25 + 9 is 34........

BTW, Whats in the box, A PW100?

:D

K

Obviously that was a deliberate mistake to see if anyone was paying attention :)
Still, at least I did the donkey work for you....

p.s. It's 5.831 to be more precise!

Are you smuggling a fat horse??

If so, dismantle crate, put horse over shoulder and reassemble crate when you have it where you want it. Chuck horse back in crate. Simple!

Ahh, fat horse or PW100, if it were only so simple. It’s a very expensive piano a friend of mine has, he has to store it temporarily while a new addition to his house is being built. He’s quite anal about the thing, don’t really know why, it’s worth 100K tops, any dent or scrape in it would reduce it’s value though.

I seem to remember this maths thing now, dim recollections of droning school teachers, (especially a one Ms Campbell who incessantly scratched at her private bits), dire warnings that one day we would actually need all this.

Many thanks all, if the move is not successful, I’ll be posting here for sale one slightly damaged and/or structurally modified instrument of unknown musical capability.

Bing

Don't blame me if it gets damaged, I can't add up :)

5 FT 7 15/16 IN, + - .005

Thanks again all, crate now safely in storage, just managed it around the corners with a hair’s breadth to spare.

Don’t mean to be an imposition, but here’s another. The piano’s optimum environment is 45 percent humidity at 60 degrees F, according to the manufacturer. Would anyone know at what rate wood bleeds moisture to ambient at varying humidity and temperature levels? Say 30 percent at 80 degrees? (Summer’s almost here)

Bing

Hmm, I think you could be on your own on this one! I take it too dry and the Piano won't like it?

In the twenty-first century there's no substitute for IT.

I bought a computer programme that creates 3D houses. Its easy to create an accurate virtual copy of your house with virtual furniture 'built' to scale. Then you can use it whenever the Missus gets into one of those "lets rearrange the furniture" moods. You can move the virtual furniture around the virtual rooms anyway you like without any effort and let her indoors examine the results at leisure. You can even prove that the setee won't fit in that corner or that there won't be room for the dog basket if the refrigerator is over there without twitching a muscle. [Really smart operators can save the results, bringing them out next time they are obliged to play the game].

My advice is not to mess about with Ghengis's old fashioned graph paper, Get a good 3D Architect programme and use it to work out the solution in virtual reality - I promise you, even when you've solved your present liittle problem, it'll still save you hours of back breaking agony in future years.