I've often heard in engineering that, "there is no shape stronger than a triangle." I also recall that arches are also very strong shapes, which can be crudely described as a perpendicularly-symmetrical half-an-ellipse; Which can be simplified to half a circle.
If there were no conventional complications with designing structures to utilize circles; Which shape is stronger?
Given a simple two-dimension-like application such as simple bridges or trusses as an example, of obvious visualizations.
Best Answer
The short answer is, if you are making a bridge, triangles are, because the way they distribute weight when they are in a group makes them stronger. A single arch is stronger, but when you use lots of triangles when building a bridge it becomes stronger than using one arch. That is why we use triangles for most of our construction. There are tons of places online that talk about this. Below are some links: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/physics-of-triangles.443267/ https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070712062525AAXy6Cm http://www.answers.com/Q/What_shape_is_stronger_an_arch_or_a_triangle