Update - April 2012 - the new portal is now at adaptive-mechanics.eng.unsw.edu.au

The following activities are part of a suite of Adaptive Tutorials that target the typical threshold concepts for mechanics courses in engineering. These highly engaging activities mimic one to one personalised tutoring by intelligently adapting to students' misconceptions and providing timely feedback.

Mechanics Fundamentals The Adaptive Tutorial, based on a inspection that is being conducted on a bridge, is targeted to refresh the fundamentals of mechanics. Students will be required to determine the loads, reactions at the supports, shear force and bending moment at any section of the given structure.

Shear Force & Bending Moment This Adaptive Tutorial explains the concepts of calculating the values of shear force and bending moment for a complex structure. The Adaptive eLearning platform also provides step by step explanation of the procedure required to plot the shear force and bending moment diagrams for the loaded beam.

2D Mohr's Circle The Mohr’s Circle provides an extremely useful aid in the visualisation of the stresses on various planes through a point in a stressed body, and can be is used to determine stresses acting on any plane passing through a point. In this Adaptive Tutorial, the user will be able to accurately plot a 2D Mohr’s circle by using a graphing tool available within the Adaptive eLearning Platform.

3D Mohr's Circle Based on the 2D Mohr’s circle fundamentals, this Adaptive Tutorial takes the user further into the 3D Mohr’s circle construction. This would allow the user to distinguish the three principal stresses and absolute maximum shear stress graphically.

Friction This tutorial explain the concepts on friction and equilibrium, and is based on a real life example of a tow truck in action on an inclined plane. This exercise also enables the user to adjust the tow truck’s support positions, as well as the inclined angle and coefficient of friction to maintain stability of the tow truck.

Free Body Diagram Free Body Diagrams are normally the first steps in most engineering mechanics analysis. This Adaptive Tutorial is designed to educate the user on the rules for the Free Body Diagrams (FBDs) and to enable them to draw them conveniently by providing the appropriate feedback for each step rerquired.

Centroids This Adaptive Tutorial is designed to improve the user’s understanding on finding the centre of gravity and moment of inertia of composite bodies using the first and second moment of area principles respectively. In this tutorial, the users have the option to drag the centroids of regular shapes to the correct location. The Adaptive eLearning platform will provide the appropriate feedback at every step of the exercise.

 

 

Trusses Trusses, using two force members made up of triangles, can be rather complicated and techniques are needed for handling these multiple forces. This tutorial is developed to provide the user with all the necessary ingredients to have a complete understanding of truss analysis.

 

 

Torsion The effect of torque is of primary concern in the design of drive shafts or axles in machinery. The objective of this Adaptive Tutorial is to guide students how to determine the internal torque, torsional shear stress and the angle of twist along the drive shafts or axles.

 

 

Projectiles Projectile motion is one of the most common curvilinear motion and is a good starting point for learning kinematics of particles. Through a simple animated example on a cannon to hit some targets, the user can understand the concepts on projectile related topics that cover rectangular coordinates (x-y) and normal and tangential coordinates (n-t).

 

 

Make Adaptive Tutorials part of your curriculum:

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Academic in charge:
Dr. Gangadhara Prusty
Associate Professor
School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering
University of New South Wales
UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Ph: +61 2 9385 5939
Fax: +61 2 9663 1222
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