Course overview
The strength of a material is its ability to resist external forces without breaking. Strength of Materials is the foundation for Engineering design courses. The course covers material behaviour, stresses, strains and deformations with simple applications in engineering designs. Topics to be chosen from: elastic and elastic-plastic behaviour; plane stress and strain; constitutive relationships, principal stress and strain; failure criteria; stresses in thin-walled pressure vessels; bending and shearing stresses in beams; Mohr's circle; deflections of beams; Euler buckling; short and long columns; torsion of solid and hollow circular sections; introduction to statistical indeterminacy and simple redundant structures; work and strain energy concepts.
Course learning outcomes
- Demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of stress and strain, and the stress-strain relationships for homogenous, isotropic materials
- Demonstrate an understanding of the relationships between loads, member forces and deformations and material stresses and strains in structural members under axial loading, torsion, flexural loadings, shear, and thin-walled pressure vessels
- Demonstrate an understanding of failure under complex stress states in structural members subjected to combined loadings
- Apply the above understanding to the designs and analysis of structural members based on strength and deformation criteria
- Demonstrate an understanding of the assumptions and limitations of the theories used in mechanics of materials
- Demonstrate competence in problem identification, formulation and solution, and critical thinking