1. MODS Fundamentals (Intro to Structural Mechanics)

Purpose: The intent of this page is to give an intro to the necessary background to structural mechanics.

Introduction to Fundamental Structures Concepts

Instead of attempting to summarize all the fundamentals necessary to understand structural mechanics, a good YouTube series by The Efficient Engineer gives a good a very informative and in depth summary.

Structural Mechanics Playlist:

This playlist is < 1.5 hrs of content. I would recommend watching all of it and referring back to it when you encounter questions as you begin your structural analysis career. Feel free to skip the fatigue failure section of this playlist as it doesn’t affect our structures (this isn’t the case in industry, fatigue is one of the more common failures for vehicles with more than a few years of lifecycle).

Note: The playlist goes through a fair bit of derivations, which are great in understanding how the fundamental failure mode equations are developed. However, I want the key takeaway to be an understanding of what aspects of your design (variables) you can leverage to strengthen your structures.

Material Properties:

This playlist is < 0.5 hrs of content. I would strongly recommend watching all of it. Understanding material properties will help you understand what materials to select, how to select them, and why to select them. Again this series is here to help you establish the foundation. A further understanding is developed by applying your learnings and tuning into your MODS courses.