Mechanics of Materials Part I. Today's learning outcome is to define and discuss
something which we're gonna call normal strain. And so again, here's that axial test that I showed before of a specimen being stretched by an axial force. The length becomes longer, it's sum L plus delta, and so we talk about strain as being the elongation per unit length and it's given the symbol epsilon and so it's that delta, that stretch over the length. And it's dimensionless. We often talk about it being as millimeters per millimeter. Or maybe inches per inch in the English unit system, but it's actually dimensionless because the millimeters per millimeter cancels out. The sign convention again, a positive te nsion force causes a positive elongation. And a negative or a compressive force causes a sho rtening and that's a negative strain. And so that's our sign convention. And here we go again. Similar to stresses now, we talk about normal strain, or engineering strain. That's what we use in most problems that we're gonna solve. It's based on the initial length of our specimen. The specimen will get slightly larger. For most material s it's quite a small amount. And so if we were to use the actual length as it stretches out, that would be true strain, and therefore the strain would be a little bit smaller because the length would be larger. And so now we have the basic concepts of stress and strain fundamental to the understanding of mechanics and materials. I've got another worksheet for you, we're gonna take another flat steel alloy bar. It's got an initial length of 900 mm. W e're gonna subject it to a tensile load and we're gonna say that the bar elongates by 0.5 mm and I want you to determine the nominal, or engineering axial strain in the bar. And again I've included the solution in the worksheet. And when you finish it, you'll be all set and I'll see you next time. [SOUND]