Courses:

Special software is required to use some of the files in this section: .csv and .exe.

Help support MIT OpenCourseWare by shopping at Amazon.com! MIT OpenCourseWare offers direct links to Amazon.com to purchase the books cited in this course. Click on the Amazon logo to the left of any citation and purchase the book from Amazon.com, and MIT OpenCourseWare will receive up to 10% of all purchases you make. Your support will enable MIT to continue offering open access to MIT courses.

This page contains a calendar of reading assignments by lecture session.

List of references for the course (PDF)

Ward, I. M., and J. Sweeney. An Introduction to the Mechanical Properties of Solid Polymers. 2nd ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. ISBN: 9780471496267.

Roylance, David. Mechanics of Materials. New York, NY: John Wiley, 1995. ISBN: 9780471593997.

Preamble to Mechanics Modules (PDF)

The modules in this section will outline some of the basic concepts of materials mechanical response by restricting the geometry to a case of simple uniaxial tension. Many of the atomistic and mechanistic concepts in our materials-oriented approach to solid mechanics can be introduced in this way, without the mathematical and conceptual complications that more realistic gemoetries entail. Subsequent modules will extend these concepts to geometrically more complicated situations, and introduce gradually the mathematical language used by the literature of the field to describe them.

1. Introduction to elastic response

2. Atomistics of elasticity

3. Introduction to composites

4. Stress-strain curves

In this and subsequent modules, we seek to apply the concepts of materials response outlined in our discussion of Simple Tensile Response to actual structures of the sort encountered in engineering design. We will restrict ourselves initially to situations still having relatively simple geometries, specifically trusses, pressure vessels, and shafts loaded in torsion. This is done partly to introduce new concepts without excessive detail, but these structural types are far from being of academic interest only. As it is very often true that the best design is the simplest design, these simple structures make up a large part of modern construction.

5. Trusses

6. Pressure vessels

7. Shear and torsion

In extending the direct method of stress analysis presented in previous modules to geometrically more complex structures, it will be convenient to have available somewhat more general mathematical statements of the kinematic, equilibrium, and constitutive equations; this is the objective of the present chapter. These equations also form the basis for more theoretical methods in stress analysis, as well as for numerical approaches such as the finite element method. We will also seek to introduce some of the notational schemes used widely in the technical literature for such entities as stress and strain. Depending on the specific application, both index and matrix notations can be very convenient; these are described in a separate module.

8. Kinematics

9. Equilibrium

10. Tensor transformations

11. Constitutive relations

This modules in this section will develop relations between stresses, deflections, and applied loads for beams and flat plates subjected to bending loads. This will be done using the direct method employed in Module 7 for circular shafts in torsion. However, bending problems have a higher order of dimensionality than twisted shafts, and it will be convenient to use the more general formulations developed in Modules 8 - 11. In particular, pseudovector-matrix notation will allow easy extension of beam concepts to flat plates.

12. Shear and bending moment diagrams

13. Stresses in beams

14. Beam displacements

15. Laminated composite plates

The results presented in earlier modules for trusses, beams, and other simple shapes provide much of the information needed in design of load-bearing structures. However, materials and structural engineers routinely need to estimate stresses and deflections in geometrically more irregular articles. This is the function of stress analysis, by which we mean the collection of theoretical and experimental techniques that goes beyond the direct-analysis approach used up to now. This is a career field in its own right, and these modules will limit themselves to outlining only a few of its principal features.

16. Closed-form solutions

17. Experimental solutions

18. Finite element analysis

19. Linear viscoelasticity

20. Yield and plastic flow

21. Dislocation basis of yield and creep

22. Statistics of fracture

23. Introduction to fracture mechanics

24. Fatigue

1. Material properties (PDF), Table of properties (PDF), props (CSV)

2. Matrix and index notation (PDF)

3. List of symbols (PDF)

4. Unit conversion factors (PDF)

1. Mohr's circle (JAVA™ Applets)

2. strs3d - Stress transformations (PDF), PC-executable version: strs3d.exe (EXE)

3. Plate - Laminated plates (PDF), PC-executable version: plate.exe (EXE)