A PRACTICAL CASE OF COORDINATION OF LABORATORY PRACTICES IN UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Nowadays, the design process of a machine has to take into consideration not only the applied loads on the elements that form it, but also in the selection of the most appropriate material. Some of the subjects taught in industrial engineering schools (Mechanics Theory, Design and Testing of Machines, Materials Engineering, Advanced Engineering Design) present, together with their laboratory practices, a very important role in the acquisition of general as well as the specific skills in engineering. The present work shows how the simultaneous and common coordination of the laboratory practices of the mentioned subjects can influence in a favourable way in the improvement of their general and specific skills. As a practical case, this work shows the development of two laboratory practices carried out by master's students in industrial engineering. In the first of the practices, the students calculated through the theory taught in the subjects, the distribution of stresses on a notched piece. On this same piece, the students also obtained experimentally using photoelasticity and using a computer model based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), the distribution of stresses. In the second practice, these same students modeled with the FEM the tensile test, considering both an elastic and elastic-plastic behavior of the material. Both behaviour were previously obtained experimentally in the materials engineering laboratory. An improvement in the attention by the students regarding the development of the practices without any coordination was observed by the lectures responsible for the subjects involved in this teaching experience.