Statics and Dynamics

This module introduces the fundamentals of engineering mechanics to the learner (i.e. Newton’s Laws of Motion, Energy, Work, Linear and Angular Momentum), and aims to build the learners engineering confidence by showing the learner analytical methods which can be used to solve everyday engineering problems. Students are expected to attend lectures and to participate in problem-solving in tutorials. The tutorials are designed to engage the learner and to show them how to implement, the universally accepted methods described in the lectures.

1. Construct Free Body Diagrams of real world problems, and thereafter apply Newton's Law of Motion and vector operations to evaluate equilibrium of particles and bodies.

2. Applying the principles of equilibrium to analyse the internal forces acting on planar trusses, frames and machines.

3. Discuss the concepts of centroids of lines, area and volume, and compute their location for bodies of arbitrary shape. Thereafter, the learners should be able to apply this learning to handle distributed loads. 

4. Analyse basic engineering problems relating to the kinematics of particles using different coordinate systems (i.e. Cartesian, n-t and cylindrical), and solve engineering problems which are time dependent (i.e. Relative Position, Velocity and Acceleration). 

5. Represent and analyse practical engineering problems (i.e. Force, Energy, and Momentum) related to the kinetics of particles by drawing FBD's and using:

   • Newton's Laws of Motion,
   • Principle of Work and Energy
   • The Conservation of Linear Momentum.
   • The Conservation of Angular Momentum