Mechanics of Materials

Mechanics of material basically talks about the strength of material. For our purpose, only those mechanics are of interest that are related to the elastic behavior of the material. Elastic meaning that if a material is under some load, and then if the load is removed, it returns to its initial shape and there will not be any deformation into the material. An example is that if you pull a spring to some extent and release it, it will go back to how it was in the beginning. That is, the spring is behaving as an elastic material. Now if you pull it some more that it deforms, it will not be elastic anymore, and when you release it, it looses its shape and will not return to its original form. Then, we are not dealing with elastic behavior and that would be called plastic behavior, which is not the subject of interest here.

First we need to know about the concepts of stress and strain, and then we can learn about different types of them through various types of loading. Also, different types of structures such as beams, columns, pressure vessels will be discussed. The followings are the subject that one needs to have some idea about before taking the FE exam:

• Stress vs. Strain

• Thermal, Hoop, and Torsional Stresses

• Beams and Columns