Hands On Learning Tools For Engineering Mechanics

A team of faculty and students in the College of Engineering at Rowan University are developing hands-on and visualization tools for use in mechanics courses. The developed tools consist of physical simply-supported and cantilever beams that are instrumented with load cells. The students can apply various loading conditions to the beams and for the simply-supported case, also move the location of the supports. A data acquisition card is used to import the measurements from the load cells and displacement transducers and a Labview graphical user interface allows the user to find reaction loads and plot deflections, stresses, and shear and bending diagrams. The tools are designed to help students overcome difficulties in working with forces, moments, displacements and stresses. The tools are being developed so that critical thinking and problem solving skills of students will be improved by engaging them in the learning process through individual experimentation. The equipment will have a positive an impact on student learning in courses the Mechanical and Civil Engineering programs and the interdisciplinary design clinic sequence as well as benefit students with various learning styles.