Understanding Solid Mechanics: Strength of Materials

Five-Session Online Training Course | Tutors: Prof. Adib Becker & Dr. Gino Duffett

Calculating stresses is only part of the design problem. To design safe, efficient structures, you also need to understand how and why components fail, and how to design against failure.

This course is the third in the "Understanding Solid Mechanics" series, following on from Stress Analysis Approaches and Applied Stress Analysis. Having covered the fundamentals of stress and strain and their application to beams, shells, cylinders and shafts, this course looks at what happens when structures are loaded beyond the elastic limit and towards failure: yielding, fatigue, fracture, contact stresses and buckling.

You will learn about the solid mechanics theories that are widely used in engineering design, analysis and simulation to predict and prevent failure. The course may be taken as a stand-alone module. You don't need to have attended the previous courses, and you don't need in-depth knowledge of FEA or computational simulation. A working knowledge of engineering design and analysis is all you need to start out with.

Each session is a building block - over the five weeks, you will cover:

1. Plasticity in Metals
2. Fatigue
3. Fracture Mechanics
4. Contact Mechanics
5. Buckling and Instability

The course covers these topics in a concise and practical manner. Unlike traditional university courses, this course avoids lengthy mathematical derivations and highlights many practical examples to illustrate the application of solid mechanics theories in modelling and analysing engineering structures. Where possible, exercises that can be done by hand are included so that attendees can test their knowledge.

Who Should Attend?

• Engineers and designers wishing to understand the background to solid mechanics in order to improve their analysis and simulation capacity.
• Engineers looking to refresh and improve their knowledge in solid mechanics.

The course is completely code independent.

Course Programme

Structures rarely fail in the way that idealised elastic theories predict. Metals yield and redistribute stress. Components subjected to repeated loading develop cracks well below their static strength, and existing cracks and defects can grow and propagate. Stresses concentrate where components meet and interact, and slender structures can lose stability long before the material itself fails. Each session of this course addresses one of these mechanisms and shows how it is assessed in engineering practice.

Session 1 - Plasticity in Metals

This session covers the properties of metals used in engineering design and applications, providing a firm understanding of plasticity and how it affects the analysis of structures operating over the elastic limit.

• Yielding in tensile tests
• Metallurgical changes in plasticity
• Multiaxial yielding
• Yield criteria used in engineering design
• Post-yielding plasticity
• Plasticity under cyclic loading
• Plasticity in beams and thick cylinders
• Residual stresses and springback
• Plasticity around cracks
• Examples

Session 2 - Fatigue

This session covers many aspects of fatigue behaviour in engineering applications, providing a firm understanding of fatigue in engineering design and how to design against fatigue failure.

• Cyclic loading
• Fatigue S-N curves
• Low cycle and high cycle fatigue
• Fatigue design approaches
• Effects of mean stress
• Fatigue life prediction
• Fatigue failure
• Crack initiation and crack growth
• Designing against fatigue
• Examples

Session 3 - Fracture Mechanics

This session covers the fundamental theory of fracture mechanics, providing a firm understanding of the underlying assumptions in fracture mechanics theory and how it is implemented in engineering applications.

• Brittle and ductile fracture
• Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics
• Determination of stress intensity factors
• Crack initiation
• Crack propagation
• Crack tip yielding
• Fatigue cracks
• Creep cracks
• Examples

Session 4 - Contact Mechanics

This session covers the fundamental theory of contact mechanics, providing a firm understanding of the underlying theory, its limitations, and its applications in engineering design.

• Classification of contact problems
• Frictional contact
• Hertzian contact problems
• Plasticity in contact problems
• Contact of wedges and punches
• Receding contact problems
• Cyclic contact behaviour
• Difficulties in analysing contact problems
• Examples

Session 5 - Buckling and Instability

This session provides a general analysis overview of buckling and instability for columns, panels and general components, including the simulation of stable and unstable post-buckling behaviour.

• Stability, instability, buckling, bifurcation
• Local, global, elastic and plastic buckling
• Column buckling
• Euler critical load
• Panel buckling
• Eigenvalue analysis and buckling modes
• Post-buckling behaviour
• Examples

P​SE Competencies Covered

Course Objectives

To provide delegates with a firm understanding of the mechanisms that govern the strength and failure of materials and structures (plasticity, fatigue, fracture, contact and buckling), and how these are assessed in engineering analysis and simulation.

Course Process and Details

This is a 5-session online training course, with each session lasting approximately 2 hours, depending on homework submissions, questions & discussions. You can attend the sessions live, and/or stream on demand.

A full set of notes in PDF format will be available for download. Personal passwords are provided to allow you to access e-learning backup material via our discussion forum. Reading lists, homework submissions and supplementary information are all available via the discussion forum.

To get the most out of the course, participation in forum discussions is very much encouraged. Typically the forum remains open for 4 weeks after the last live session.

For additional info on telephony charges please email e-learning@nafems.org.

PDH Credits: 10