Instructor

Prof. Tanmay Bhandarkar

Semester

Autumn 2020

Course Difficulty

The course is mathematical in nature and Prof’s rigorous teaching makes it moderate to difficult to understand, especially for those who don’t have a background in vector calculus and linear algebra. Although he covers the required background to understand it.

Time Commitment Required

Course would require about 2 to 3 hours per week apart from the lectures.

Grading Policy and Statistics

Grading follows bell curve. A large weightage is given to homeworks (almost 60%) but this was mainly because of the online scenario. The rest is midsem and endsem.

Attendance Policy

None in online. Cannot comment about offline semester.

Pre-requisites

A knowledge in multivariate calculus and linear algebra can be beneficial. Background in solid mechanics can be an added advantage.

Topics Covered in the Course

The course is about fundamental concepts in structural mechanics. It has two parts, continuum mechanics and elasticity. In the first part he covers mathematical preliminaries such as vectors, tensors and multivariate calculus. Using these basics, kinematic equations, balance laws and constitutive equations are covered. In the next section he covers the aspects of linear elasticity, boundary value problems and further torsion.

Teaching Style

The instructor covers the course from a very mathematical perspective and hence a grasp on mathematical preliminaries becomes important. He uses lecture slides, which are quite comprehensive in nature. The pace of teaching is appreciable, he makes sure that fundamentals are clear to students.

Feedback on Exams

The assignments are heavy and rigorous in nature and involve a lot of proofs. The same goes for exams as well. Since the assignments cover all the important concepts, having spent time on them makes exams easier. However, this depends a lot on the instructor.

How strongly would I recommend this course?

If one wants to build their fundamentals in structural analysis, then this is a good course, however, it is not meant for advanced structural analysis.

When to take this course?

I did this course in Autumn 2020. The course usually runs in Autumn semester, otherwise one can take whenever they feel like.

Review By: Dhananjay Tiwari