Kips to Pounds-force (kip to lbf)
1 kip equals 1,000 pounds-force exactly.
How to convert kips to pounds-force
To convert kips to pounds-force, multiply the number of kips by 1,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply pounds-force by 0.001.
pounds-force = kips × 1,000
Example: 10 kips = 10,000 pounds-force.
About these units
Kip (kip)
1,000 pounds-force (4.448 kN). Used for structural loads in US engineering.
Structural engineers in the United States wanted a force unit that avoided long strings of digits, and so they joined kilo and pound into kip, sometimes called a kilopound. One kip equals 1,000 pounds-force, which is about 4,448 newtons or 4.448 kilonewtons. Writing kipf or klbf makes plain that force, and not mass, is meant.
Because a pound-force is the weight of one avoirdupois pound under standard gravity, 4.4482216152605 N, the kip carries that definition with it and does not vary with local gravity. A beam design might list a column load as 150 kips instead of 150,000 lbf, and stress is often given in kips per square inch, abbreviated ksi.
Shipping also uses the term as a deadweight unit. Rarely, kip has meant a mass of 1,000 pounds. An unrelated obsolete Malaysian kip of roughly 9.19 kg also existed. In SI practice kips are replaced by kilonewtons.
1 kip = 4,448.221615 newtons (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kip (unit); Wikipedia: Pound (force)
Pound-force (lbf)
Exactly 4.4482216152605 newtons: the weight of a one-pound mass under standard gravity. The US unit of force.
People have used the pound-force since the eighteenth century for low-precision work, long before anyone needed to define it carefully. A pound of material on Earth's surface pulls with about a pound of force, which made it convenient to treat the two as one. The twentieth century demanded a precise definition: one pound-force is the avoirdupois pound, exactly 0.45359237 kg, multiplied by standard gravity of 9.80665 meters per second squared, which comes to about 4.448 newtons.
Because the unit is not simply mass times acceleration in its own system, formulas in English engineering units need a conversion constant of about 32.174 pound-feet per pound-force second squared. A slug, 32.174049 pounds of mass, is what one pound-force accelerates at one foot per second squared. In the US, jet and rocket thrust is often given as pounds of thrust: each Space Shuttle solid rocket booster produced 3,300,000 pounds-force. Earth's gravity varies by up to about half a percent between equator and pole, which low-precision work can ignore.
1 pound-force = 4.448221615 newtons (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Pound (force); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Pounds-force to kips (reverse)
- Kips to newtons
- Kips to kilonewtons
- Newtons to pounds-force
- Kilonewtons to pounds-force
- Kilograms-force to pounds-force
- Meganewtons to pounds-force
- Millinewtons to pounds-force
- Ounces-force to pounds-force
- Grams-force to pounds-force
- Poundals to pounds-force
- Dynes to pounds-force
- Tons-force (short) to pounds-force
- Tons-force (long) to pounds-force
- Tonnes-force to pounds-force
See all force units.