Career Connections at SAVY 2019: Session 2, Day 2 – Strength and Structure of Engineering Materials (Rising 7th)

Posted by hallep on Tuesday, July 16, 2019 in Grade 7, SAVY.

Today was our day of sudden catastrophic failures! We covered two types of sudden catastrophic failures.  The first failure type we covered was buckling. Buckling strength is affected by many things, not just the material selected. To explore buckling strength, we got into groups and made beams with different heights, cross sectional shapes, and materials.  Ask your student how buckling strength is affected by these parameters.  Which combination was the strongest?  We also discussed fatigue failure (another sudden catastrophic failure), and how it caused the Aloha Airlines disaster.  We made our own experiment to determine the cycles to fatigue of paperclips.

This afternoon we also discussed free body diagrams (FBDs).  Engineers use these to determine the types of forces on a part or system.  We also learned the conditions for static equilibrium, which helps us determine the reaction forces on a part.  This will help us determine forces for our stress calculations.

Tomorrow we’re going to discuss an engineer’s ethical obligations to society.

-Kelsay