Mechanics of Materials Second Edition

Abstract

Mechanics of materials is the study and the analysis of the internal forces within materials and the deformations that result from those forces. This book appears in a time of transition for education in the mechanics of materials. The traditional course in “strength of materials” that long formed an important part of the engineering curriculum had as one of its primary goals, acquainting the students with the details of many analytical and empirical solutions that could be applied to structural design. This reliance on a catalog of results has lessened as the finite element method has become commonly available for stress analysis. Another important development is that current research in mechanics of materials is beginning to bring to reality the dream of the merger of continuum solid mechanics and material science into a unified field. For these reasons, the emphasis in the first course in mechanics of materials is becoming oriented more toward helping students understand the theoretical foundations, especially the concepts of stress and strain, the stress-strain relations including the meaning of isotropy, and the criteria for failure and fracture. In Chap. 1, we provide an extensive review of statics, with problems, that the instructor may choose to cover or simply have students read. In reviewing distributed loads, we lay the groundwork for our definitions in Chap. 2 of the normal and shear stresses. Chapter 2 also introduces the longitudinal and shear strains in terms of changes in infinitesimal material elements. Chapters 3 and 4 cover bars subjected to axial and torsional loads and introduce the definitions of the elastic and shear moduli. In Chaps. 5 and 6, we discuss the internal forces and moments and the states of stress in beams. With the examples in Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 as motivation, in Chaps. 7 and 8, we discuss the general states of stress and strain and their transformations. Chapters 9 and 10 cover deformations of beams and the buckling of columns. Energy methods are introduced in Chap. 11, and in Chap. 12, we discuss failure criteria for general states of stress and introduce modern fracture mechanics, which