Mechanics of Materials Labs with SolidWorks Simulation 2013

Book excerpt: This book is designed as a software-based lab book to complement a standard textbook in a mechanics of material course, which is usually taught in undergraduate courses. This book can also be used as an auxiliary workbook in a CAE or Finite Element Analysis course for undergraduate students. Each book comes with a disc containing video demonstrations, a quick introduction to SolidWorks, and all the part files used in the book. This textbook has been carefully developed with the understanding that CAE software has developed to a point that it can be used as a tool to aid students in learning engineering ideas, concepts and even formulas. These concepts are demonstrated in each section of this book. Using the graphics-based tools of SolidWorks Simulation can help reduce the dependency on mathematics to teach these concepts substantially. The contents of this book have been written to match the contents of most mechanics of materials textbooks. There are 14 chapters in this book. Each chapter is designed as one week’s workload, consisting of 2 to 3 sections. Each section is designed for a student to follow the exact steps in that section and learn a concept or topic of mechanics of materials. Typically, each section takes 15-40 minutes to complete the exercises. Each copy of this book comes with a disc containing videos that demonstrate the steps used in each section of the book, a 121 page introduction to Part and Assembly Modeling with SolidWorks in PDF format, and all the files readers may need if they have any trouble. The concise introduction to SolidWorks pdf is designed for those students who have no experience with SolidWorks and want to feel more comfortable working on the exercises in this book. All of the same content is available for download on the book’s companion website.