Instructor Class Description
Time Schedule:
Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein
CEE 220
Seattle Campus
Introduction to Mechanics of Materials
Introduction to the concepts of stress, deformation, and strain in solid materials. Development of basic relationships among loads, stresses, and deflections of structural and machine elements such as rods, shafts, and beams. Load-carrying capacity of these elements under tension, compression, torsion, bending, and shear forces. Prerequisite: minimum grade of 2.0 in A A 210. Offered: WSpS.
Class description
Learning Objectives
The primary goals of this course can be stated as follows.
Upon completion of this course, each student should:
- demonstrate a basic working knowledge of the fundamental concepts and problem-solving techniques associated with stress, strain, simple constitutive theory, and with applications involving axial loading, pressure vessels, torsion, and bending, including introductory-level statically indeterminate systems.
- have accumulated significant practice in solving a variety of application problems.
- have gained experience in generating and presenting suitable solutions to open-ended problems involving course concepts in combination with other general considerations.
- be able to carry on technical discussions involving the concepts in the course.
- be able to solve well-posed problems with reasonable speed and accuracy, and should begin to demonstrate mastery of the general concepts.
- have gained experience in addressing engineering problems in the context of working groups.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Learning is achieved by active exposure to the material. Instruction is thus composed of
- guided preparation for classes through reading assignments and graded pre-lecture on-line quizzes,
- classroom lectures and discussions,
- group activities during weekly lab sessions with hands-on problem sets, and
- weekly homework assignments
Recommended preparation
This course focuses on stress analysis for standard structural elements such as rods, shafts, and beams. In order to perform stress analysis you will have to determine internal forces (axial and shear) and internal moments (bending moment and torque). How to do so is covered in AA210-Statics, which is a prerequisite for this course.
If you feel uncomfortable with the material covered by AA210 be prepared to put in some extra time for reviewing that material again before attempting any exam in this course.
Class assignments and grading
Assessment
Various mechanisms will be used to help us all achieve these goals and to evaluate our levels of success. There will be reading assignments for each class, weekly homework with both group and individual components, on-line quizzes, a set of basic competency exams (approximately 10 minutes each), group design projects with written and/or oral presentations, two 1-hour exams, and a 2-hour final exam. There will also be various hands-on activities, which typically will be ungraded beyond keeping a record of participation. The grading breakdown will be as follows:
- Basic competency exams: passing all these is required to pass the course. These exams can not be passed on partial credit, but there will be mechanisms for re-taking these competency exams.
- On-line quizzes: for each lecture you will prepare by reading assignments from the textbook. You are asked to take on-line quizzes about the content of the reading assignment before each class. These quizzes shall help you evaluating your learning success. They may be taken as often as you like and will provide you with instant feedback. The quizzes will be worth 5% of the grade.
- Homework will be worth 20% of the grade. We will provide help during office hours (Professor and both TA's). Selected results have to be submitted on-line and will be graded automatically. Written documentation of your work has to be handed in no later than noon of the day following the deadline (this usually translates to Friday at noon). The written portion of your homework will be graded based on clearity of your presentation of the solution and represents 25% of your homework grade (5% of your final grade).
- The design projects/hands-on activities will be worth 5% of the grade, and these will use a simple group evaluation: evaluation of a group product in combination with an internal allocation of points. The latter will be done at the end of the quarter.
- The two 1-hour exams will be worth 20% each, and the final will be worth 30%.
- Bonus points will be assigned for valuable forum contributions, and for bonus questions on exams. These bonus points are not required for reaching 100%, but they will allow you to compensate for missed points on exams and homework.
The information above is intended to be helpful in choosing courses. Because the instructor may further develop his/her plans for this course, its characteristics are subject to change without notice. In most cases, the official course syllabus will be distributed on the first day of class.
Additional Information
Last Update by Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein
Date: 02/28/2006
