A VIRTUAL LABORATORY TO SUPPORT THE TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS OF 3D STRESS STATES IN THEORY OF LINEAR ELASTICITY

Solid bodies deform under applied external forces. Theory of Linear Elasticity is a discipline that studies the mechanical response of elastic, solid bodies. When an elastic solid is deformed, internal strains and stresses are generated. The classic way of dealing with the study of elastic solids in Mechanics is to compute these scalar fields in the body domain. The strength of a body depends on the amount of stress and strain that is able to withstand. The aim of this work is to present a virtual laboratory to study the state of stresses in a point of an elastic solid. This application is implemented with the MATLAB Graphic User Interface (GUI), and allows obtaining in a graphical and numerical way: (1) the initial state of stresses; (2) the principal stresses; (3) the Cauchy stress vector in any direction of space and (4) the planes of maximum shearing stress. The authors believe that this virtual laboratory is a powerful tool to support the teaching and learning process of mechanics-related subjects in engineering studies.