Climbing Force Simulator
Circles represent climber's hands, feet, and the center of mass. Try dragging these three circles around, and see how the forces required to hold on change. In every position, it is posible to vary the body tension to shift weight towards climber's hands or feet.
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Scenarios
- Overhang. Try playing with the slider. You can hang entirely from your hands, or you can push some weight through your feet. This decreases the force through your hands, but requires body tension and worsens the force angle. If you bring the center of mass closer to the wall, hand force decreases significantly.
- Hanging on a vertical wall. This illustrates how you can either "hang" or "stand" without changing body position: try adjusting the slider. You can save some serious hand strength by trusting your feet.
- Climbing a slab. Try moving the center of mass. When it is farther from the wall, the force through feet is at a better angle to the rock. The optimum, without falling backwards, is to be balanced on your feet. But it is also possible to reach the optimum in other positions, using body tension to push through your hands at an angle.
Additional Information
Displayed forces are the ones required to achieve a static position. They are computed by solving the equations for zero net force and torque. Because there are only three equations for four variables, there is always one extra degree of freedom. This is the body tension, adjustable by the slider.
You can try it in real world. While climbing, it is always possible to pull on your hands in various ways such that your body position doesn't change. You can use this fact to optimize the forces in your fingers, maximize friction, etc. This app allows you to experiment with it virtually.
Force units are in % of body weight. For example, if your body mass is 60kg, then your body weight is ~600N. Force of 50% is then equivalent to 300N. "Body tension" is the torque required to keep the "extremities" from changing relative angle. Unit is % of body weight times meter.
You can check out the source code on GitHub, or you can discuss the app on Reddit.