What is the significance of saint venant's principle?

While calculating the stresses in a body since we we assume a constant distribution of stress across a cross section if the body is loaded along the centroid of the cross section , this assumption of uniformity is assumed only on the basis of Saint Venant's Principle.

Saint venant principle states that the non uniformity in the stress at the point of application of load is only significant at small distances below the load and depths greater than the width of the loaded material this non uniformity is negligible and hence a uniform stress distribution is a reasonable and correct assumption while solving the body for stresses thus greatly simplifying the analysis.

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