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MITx: Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Part 2: Stress Transformations, Beams, Columns, and Cellular Solids

Explore materials from the atomic to the continuum level, and apply your learning to mechanics and engineering problems.

4 weeks
11–13 hours per week
Self-paced
Progress at your own speed
This course is archived
Future dates to be announced

About this course

Skip About this course

All around us, engineers are creating materials whose properties are exactly tailored to their purpose. This course is the second of three in a series of mechanics courses from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Taken together, these courses provide similar content to the MIT subject 3.032: Mechanical Behavior of Materials.

The 3.032x series provides an introduction to the mechanical behavior of materials, from both the continuum and atomistic points of view. At the continuum level, we learn how forces and displacements translate into stress and strain distributions within the material. At the atomistic level, we learn the mechanisms that control the mechanical properties of materials. Examples are drawn from metals, ceramics, glasses, polymers, biomaterials, composites and cellular materials.

Part 1 covers stress-strain behavior, topics in linear elasticity and the atomic basis for linear elasticity, and composite materials.

Part 2 covers stress transformations, beam bending, column buckling, and cellular materials.

Part 3 covers viscoelasticity (behavior intermediate to that of an elastic solid and that of a viscous fluid), plasticity (permanent deformation), creep in crystalline materials (time dependent behavior), brittle fracture (rapid crack propagation) and fatigue (failure due to repeated loading of a material).

At a glance

  • Institution: MITx
  • Subject: Engineering
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Prerequisites:
    • Classical mechanics (or statics)
    • Chemistry at the first-year university level
    • Differential equations
    • 3.032.1x, or an equivalent course in the elastic behavior of materials
  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills:Materials Science, Ceramics, Deformation, Mechanics, Composites, Buckling, Fatigue (Material), Metal Bending, Linear Elasticity, Viscoelasticity, Composite Materials, Fracture Mechanics

What you'll learn

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  • Concepts relating to stress transformation, including equivalent stresses, principal stresses, and maximum shear stress
  • How to solve stress transformation problems using Mohr’s circle
  • How to solve problems relating to beam bending and column buckling
  • How the stiffness and strength of cellular materials depend on their mechanisms of deformation and failure

Week 1: Equivalent stresses for varying orientations Principal stresses, maximum shear stress Mohr’s circles
Week 2: Stresses in beams Shear and bending moment diagrams in beams Strain energy
Week 3: Beam deflection Column buckling Cellular solids
Week 4: Final Quiz

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners residing in one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. edX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

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