Well Gary, kinda.....:wink
You are correct that the labeling of Torque can be ft-lbf or lbf-ft. It is like 5x2=10 just as 2x5=10.
And because Torque and Work (force through a distance) do have the same units, you have to be careful.
From Wikipedia-
“"Foot-pound" is sometimes also used as a unit of torque (see Pound-foot (torque)). In the United States this unit is often used to specify, for example, the tightness of a bolt or the output of an engine. Although they are dimensionally equivalent, energy (a scalar) and torque (a vector) are distinct physical quantities. Both energy and torque can be expressed as a product of a force vector with a displacement vector (hence pounds and feet); energy is the scalar product of the two, and torque is the vector product."
If you apply 100 ft-lbf through your torque wrench on a head bolt (and it does not rotate) you have applied a "torque" to the fastener but you have not done any "work". The torque can be modeled as a force “couple”, two equal but opposite forces acting at the bolt head in equilibrium and each force located at a distance of 50% of the total length of the torque wrench.
If you apply the same torque to the bolt head and the head turns a certain degree of arc (given as φ in the attached figure) then you have done work on the bolt head.
This result can be understood more simply by considering the torque as arising from a force of constant magnitude F, being applied perpendicularly to a lever arm at a distance r, as shown in the figure. This force will act through the distance along the circular arc s = rφ, so the work done is
W = Fs = Frφ
Notice that only the component of torque in the direction of the angular velocity vector contributes to the work.
