In the previous blog we talked about how there are various facets to material behaviour. We are interested particularly in the mechanical aspects. What do we mean by the mechanical behaviour of materials?
Basically mechanics is the study of movement of objects. In many situations would like to know where a particular object will be at a later time. For example, when a football is struck for a pass, we may want to move towards and intercept it during a game. It appears that humans (and most other animals) are very good estimating this movement in many simple cases. However, when the motion of an object is more complicated, such as the path of a person walking on a spinning carousel, a more careful description is required.
As a first step, it was proposed by Newton that the motion of bodies is determined by a quantity called "force" acting on them. To be more precise, the change in velocity of an object in a given time is due to the direction and quantity of the force acting on it. Based on this description it's possible to calculate the positions of objects ranging from trucks on highways to planets in the solar system.
So far we've been talking about the motion of "rigid bodies". That is, while the whole body may move from place to place, the parts of the body don't change their positions relative to each other. Such a process is called the deformation of a body. Bodies do deform quite often and we need to be able to describe that as well. For example, if a basketball is bounced on the ground, it moves without deformation till it touches the ground. During contact with the ground it actually changes shape and becomes flatter. During this time, the parts of the basketball are moving relative to each other and the basketball deforms. The study of such a process is called the Mechanics of Deformable Bodies.
In the next blog, I will describe how deformable bodies are studied.
Basically mechanics is the study of movement of objects. In many situations would like to know where a particular object will be at a later time. For example, when a football is struck for a pass, we may want to move towards and intercept it during a game. It appears that humans (and most other animals) are very good estimating this movement in many simple cases. However, when the motion of an object is more complicated, such as the path of a person walking on a spinning carousel, a more careful description is required.
As a first step, it was proposed by Newton that the motion of bodies is determined by a quantity called "force" acting on them. To be more precise, the change in velocity of an object in a given time is due to the direction and quantity of the force acting on it. Based on this description it's possible to calculate the positions of objects ranging from trucks on highways to planets in the solar system.
So far we've been talking about the motion of "rigid bodies". That is, while the whole body may move from place to place, the parts of the body don't change their positions relative to each other. Such a process is called the deformation of a body. Bodies do deform quite often and we need to be able to describe that as well. For example, if a basketball is bounced on the ground, it moves without deformation till it touches the ground. During contact with the ground it actually changes shape and becomes flatter. During this time, the parts of the basketball are moving relative to each other and the basketball deforms. The study of such a process is called the Mechanics of Deformable Bodies.
In the next blog, I will describe how deformable bodies are studied.
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