Jason, of the 4 options you list, only #4 makes any sense. Moving will just consume time for you that would be better spent getting out there and meeting people. Get involved in anything local: church, habitat for humanity, volunteer organizations, anything that puts you in a group of people...
Going back to your original simple sketch, this does not seem to be a difficult problem. You already have the beginnings of a free-body-diagram. I would flesh out your diagram with variables for everything and write out the force balance equations with the hydraulic cylinder pressure as the...
First, I agree with the other posters that a PDF is infinitely easier to deal with in this forum. I was able to install an RAR unarchive tool and view your problem. It looks as though you have already performed an FEM analysis on your simple structure and therefore I would assume you could do...
