Course Syllabus

Jump to Today

 HeaderBridge.jpg

Prerequisites

Applied Physics 50a, Physics 15a or Physics 16 (mechanics of rigid bodies)

Applied Mathematics 21a or Mathematics 21a (previously) (multivariate calculus)

Applied Mathematics 21b or Mathematics 21b (previously or concurrently) (linear algebra; ODEs)

Prerequisites by topic

Calculus

Elementary differential equations

Elementary linear algebra (co-requirement)

Vector mechanics of rigid bodies

Course website

Problem and solution sets will be posted on the course web site

Textbook

Mechanics of Materials, by FP Beer, ER Johnston Jr., JT DeWolf, DF Mazurek, 5th Ed.

Outline

  1. Concept of stress
  2. Strain and its relationship to stress
  3. Yield and fracture criteria
  4. Torsion
  5. Bending
  6. Deflection of beams including statically indeterminate beams
  7. Shearing of beams
  8. Transformation of stress and strain
  9. Stability and buckling
  10. Energy methods
  11. Introduction to elasticity and other topics

Instructor:                  

Professor Joost Vlassak

                                308 Pierce Hall

                                tel.: 496 0424

                                email: vlassak@esag.harvard.edu

                                Office hours: Mondays 2:00 –3:00 PM

                                Administrative Assistant: Melissa Majkut, Pierce Hall 310

Teaching Fellow         

                                Matt Fernandes

                                fernandes@g.harvard.edu

                                Office Hours: Tuesdays 17:00 - 18:00 (Pierce 320)

                                Bolei Deng

                                boleideng@g.harvard.edu

                                Office hours: Fridays 14:00 - 15:00 after class (Pierce 320)

                                Kevin Tian

                                kvntian@gmail.com 

                                Office hours: Wednesdays 17:00-18:00 (McKay 305)

Lectures              

Lectures are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1PM in Pierce 209.

Sections

There will be one weekly section offered by a teaching fellow. In the sections, we will cover examples illustrating the concepts taught in class and answer questions related to problem sets and exams. While attendance is optional, it is strongly encouraged.

Thursdays 1-2pm, Maxwell Dworkin 233

 

Laboratories

The course will include two tutorials (COMSOL and SolidWorks) and two laboratory experiments. Written notes will be handed out at the time of the tutorials and labs. A full report for each laboratory will be due approximately two weeks after the experiments.

At the end of the semester, there will be a design contest. Teams of three to four students will design a structure to meet a set of specifications. The structures will be fabricated using rapid prototyping techniques and will be loaded to failure. The winning team will get a set of digital calipers. The design contest is supposed to be a fun event where you apply some of the things you learned in class to design a structure; the contest is not graded, but participation and attendance are required to get a grade for the course.

Laboratory projects:

  1. Tensile testing on the Instron (steel, aluminum, self-designed ABS samples) to determine Young’s modulus, yield stress, ultimate tensile strength. (Universal testing machine, mechanical extensometer, strain gauge extensometer)
  2. Stresses and deflections of simple beams using strain gages and dial gages.
  3. Design competition involving building and testing a structure to meet specific requirements.

Instructional labs:

  1. Experimental Labs: Steven Cortesa

scortesa@g.harvard.edu Pierce Hall G11C, 617-495-2841

  1. Tutorials: Andreas Haggerty

ahaggert@seas.harvard.edu, Pierce Hall G11C, 617-495-2841

Examinations

Two quizzes are scheduled for the regular lecture periods on March 9 and April 13; the date of the final examination is determined by the Registrar's Office and will be finalized later.

There are no make-up examinations for the quizzes. If notification of an unavoidable absence from an exam is given to the instructor before the exam, the weights of the homework and the final examination will be re-adjusted to compensate for the absence.

Problem sets

Homework will be assigned approximately on a weekly basis and will be due by the beginning of the lecture on Friday of the following week. Solutions will be typically handed out at the second class following the due date.

Guidelines for submission:

  1. Hand in your work on white, lined or gridded 8.5" x 11" sheets.
  2. In the top left corner, put your name, the problem set number, the due date, and the course name.
  3. Put your answers in numerical order as assigned.
  4. Problem sets will be graded both for correctness and for clarity. Graders are not required to guess the intended meaning of poorly written answers.
  5. Your work should be neat and orderly; make large clear, and clearly labeled diagrams.
  6. Formulae and numbers alone aren't sufficient; a short written explanation should accompany each solution to explain your reasoning.

Collaborating on problem sets:

  1. Collaboration in planning and thinking through homework problems is allowed, but no collaboration is permitted in writing up solutions. You are allowed to work with other students currently taking ES120 in discussing, brainstorming, and walking through solutions to homework problems, but when you are through interacting, you must write up your solutions independently and may not check them against each other or against notes taken during the collaboration. There may be no passing of homework papers between students, nor is it permissible for one person simply to tell another the answer.
  2. If you have collaborated with students in the course in the planning and design of solutions to homework problems, list the names of your collaborators at the end of your paper.
  3. Under no circumstances may you use solutions sets to problems that may have been distributed by the course in the past or are available on-line, or the homework papers of students who have taken the course in past years. Any violation of this policy will be referred to the Ad Board.

Handing in problem sets:

  1. Problem sets must be turned in by 1 PM on Friday each week, unless otherwise announced.
  2. Put your problem sets in the mailbox next to Melissa’s office (Pierce Hall 310). Mailbox will be emptied at 1PM the day the set is due.

Late problem sets:

  1. Homework handed in late will be penalized 20% per weekday unless prior permission is obtained from the instructor. Homework handed in one week late will not receive any credit. Extensions are granted only in exceptional cases, such as an extended illness, and can be granted only by the instructor. A written confirmation of the extension must be stapled to your problem set if you are to receive any credit beyond that outlined earlier.
  2. Your submissions must still be original work; copies of the official solutions or the solutions of others are not acceptable.
  3. Everybody gets one "free" deadline extension, for which they can still obtain full credit for a problem set turned in one week late.

Getting graded problem sets back:

  1. Problem sets are returned during class.
  2. If you miss class, pick up your graded problem set from your TF within two weeks of the due date.

Administration of grades:

  1. Keep your graded problem sets; they are your only proof of completion of work.
  2. After two weeks from the due date you can no longer get re-grades.
  3. Once the final has been taken, problem set grades can no longer be changed.

Requests for re-grades:

Requests for correction of grading mistakes in examination books must be made when the work is returned to you. Once an examination book is removed from the room in which it is returned to you, grades can no longer be changed. For homework sets, requests must be made within two weeks of issuance of the assigned grade. Clerical errors will be corrected immediately. If an exam or a homework assignment is submitted for re-evaluation, the entire exam or assignment will be re-graded from scratch. The resulting score can go either up or down. The score will not be changed unless it results in a change of 5% or more of the maximum point total for each examination, or a 10% on homework assignments.

Determining your final grade

The final grade is calculated from your grades for the midterm examination, the final exam, the lab writ-ups, and the problem sets, with the following weights:

1st Hour Exam:                  15%

2nd Hour Exam:                 15%

Final exam:                        30%

Lab write-ups:                   15%

Problem sets:                     25%

ABET info

ABET Category content:  Engineering Science 80%, Engineering Design 20%. 

Lab Schedule

Week Day Date Lab Topic
1 M 22-Jan First week of classes
W 24-Jan Schedule lab section times
F 26-Jan  
2 M 29-Jan SolidWorks Tutorial
W 31-Jan Part creation, assemblies, and drawings
F 2-Feb Laser cutting - build acrylic test specimens
3 M 5-Feb Lab 1 - Tensile Testing on the Instron
W 7-Feb Aluminum & steel
F 9-Feb Acrylic samples from previous week
4 M 12-Feb
W 14-Feb
F 16-Feb
5 M 19-Feb
W 21-Feb
F 23-Feb
6 M 26-Feb Lab 1 report due online Monday, Feb 26
W 28-Feb
F 2-Mar
7 M 5-Mar COMSOL Tutorial
W 7-Mar Basic structural modeling & analysis
F 9-Mar Beam bending
F 9-Mar Midterm 1
8 M 12-Mar Spring Break
W 14-Mar  
F 16-Mar  
9 M 19-Mar Lab 2 - Beam Analysis (simply-supported beam)
W 21-Mar Compare COMSOL, hand calculation and lab results
F 23-Mar Form Design Project teams
10 M 26-Mar Design Project Form Teams for Contest
W 28-Mar Tensile demo, rules, constraints
F 30-Mar Brainstorming & design ideation
11 M 2-Apr SolidWorks Design
W 4-Apr COMSOL Analysis
F 6-Apr Laser Cutter Training
12 M 9-Apr Lab 2 report due online Monday, April 9
M 9-Apr Fabrication & testing
W 11-Apr Midterm 2
W 11-Apr Comparison of results
F 13-Apr Redesign discussions
F 13-Apr  
13 M 16-Apr Redesign
W 18-Apr Analysis
F 20-Apr Design submission deadline
14 M 23-Apr
W 25-Apr Last day of classes
F 27-Apr Design Contest

 

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due