Pascals to Pounds Per Square Foot (Pa to psf)
1 pascal equals 0.02088543423 pounds per square foot (rounded).
How to convert pascals to pounds per square foot
To convert pascals to pounds per square foot, multiply the number of pascals by 0.02088543423. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply pounds per square foot by 47.88025898 (rounded).
pounds per square foot = pascals × 0.02088543423
Example: 10 pascals = 0.2088543423 pounds per square foot.
About these units
Pascal (Pa)
The SI unit of pressure: one newton per square meter. A very small unit; atmospheric pressure is about 101,325 Pa.
Blaise Pascal never saw a pascal, because the name was adopted by the 14th CGPM in 1971 for the newton per square meter. He did, however, earn the honor. In 1647 he published experiments on the vacuum, and on 19 September 1648 his brother-in-law Florin Périer carried a mercury barometer up the Puy de Dôme near Clermont, where the column stood at about 23 inches against about 26 at the base. Pascal had reasoned that air pressure should fall with altitude, and the result confirmed it.
One pascal is a tiny pressure, so the unit is mostly met with prefixes. Standard atmospheric pressure is 101,325 Pa, a typical sea-level reading is about 1,013 hPa, and the threshold of hearing in air is taken as a reference pressure of 20 micropascals. Building airtightness tests, in contrast, are run at 50 Pa.
Pascal is also remembered for hydrostatics, where he showed that pressure depends on height difference rather than the weight of the fluid, and for the hydraulic press.
The pascal is the reference unit for pressure on this site.
Sources: Wikipedia: Pascal (unit); Wikipedia: Blaise Pascal
Pound Per Square Foot (psf)
About 47.88 pascals. Used in US structural engineering for distributed loads.
A square foot is 144 square inches, so one pound per square foot is one 144th of a psi, which comes to about 47.88 Pa; NIST gives 47.88026. The number is easy to picture: spread one pound-force evenly over a floor tile a foot across and that is the pressure, tiny compared with the 101,325 Pa of one standard atmosphere.
Building codes in the United States commonly state loads on floors and roofs this way, and snow and wind pressures are tabulated in the same unit. Metric countries use kilopascals or newtons per square metre instead, and 1 kPa is about 20.9 psf. Multiplying a psf figure by 144 gives psi, and by 47.88 gives pascals, so a 40 psf floor load is about 1.9 kPa.
1 pound per square foot = 47.88025898 pascals (approximately).
Sources: NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8; Wikipedia: Pounds per square inch
Related conversions
- Pounds per square foot to pascals (reverse)
- Pascals to kilopascals
- Pascals to bars
- Pascals to standard atmospheres
- Pascals to PSI
- Pascals to hectopascals
- Pascals to megapascals
- Pascals to millibars
- Pascals to torr
- Pascals to millimeters of mercury
- Pascals to inches of mercury
- Pascals to gigapascals
- Pascals to kilopounds per square inch
- Kilopascals to pounds per square foot
- Bars to pounds per square foot
- Standard atmospheres to pounds per square foot
- PSI to pounds per square foot
See all pressure units.