Based on the teaching practice of structural mechanics, the concepts of geometric structural analysis are used for determining the internal forces of statically determinate structures, with the kinematical method to construct the influence lines of beam structures, and with the principle of virtual work to calculate the reaction forces of supports of statically determinate structures; The differences and the relations among the degrees of freedom, the computational degrees of freedom, the structural dynamic computational degrees of freedom and the degrees of freedom for stability problems are analyzed; The characteristics and the applications of the force method, the displacement method are reviewed. The method of applying the multimedia, the experiment and the numerical simulation in teaching the structural mechanics is discussed. The intrinsic relationship in the structural mechanics, some confusing concepts and the characteristics of various methods, are clarified.

This paper analyzes the textbooks of mechanics, especially the textbooks and their teaching systems of theoretical mechanics and materials mechanics, including the national states of the mechanics courses, the textbooks, the achievements and problems of the teaching systems for elementary mechanics, the introduction of overseas elementary mechanics textbooks, focusing on the theoretical mechanics teaching and the teaching system in foreign countries.

Student-centered teaching and learning is now widely accepted in the modern higher education worldwide with active learning as its core. It is a big challenge for both the teachers and the students to turn successfully from the traditional teacher-centered teaching to the relatively new student-centered learning. This paper presents a discussion on the feasible and efficient ways from the traditional“teacher-centered teaching”to the “student-centered learning” organized by the Quality Assurance Office and the Center for Excellent Teaching of the Tongji University. Being used to the cramming teaching, some students lack the initiative of active learning, teachers should do their best to arouse students in class. Effective ways to encourage active learning include designing an appropriate quality evaluation system, focusing on student learning efficiency and ability improvement, with an effective teaching pedagogy such as the “peer instruction”, and the introductions of problems or projects without preset answers in class.

The paper introduces the basic situation, characteristics and problems of the 7th teaching competition of youth faculty of Fundamental Mechanics Courses, which was held by the teaching guidance committee of foundation mechanics courses in colleges and universities of the Ministry of Education. Some suggestions were given to improve in teaching abilities of teachers. Through this paper, the teachers in colleges and universities in China can know this teaching competition and the problems reflected in the competition. This paper is also a reference for improving the teaching level and quality of fundamental mechanics courses in China.

The stress transformation formula, which is also called the Cauchy's formula for stresses on slanted surfaces, is widely used in solid mechanics. No explicit statement has been found on its limitations in application. The stresses at the sharp point of a V-shaped free-surface notch on a bar under axial loading at both ends are examined as an example. With the two intersecting surfaces being free, it is deduced from the transformation equations that the sharp point is stress free. This deduction is however contradictory to the fact that the stress concentrates near the sharp point. Clearly the stress transformation formula leads to incorrect results and thus is not valid at that sharp point. It is known that if the stress transformation formula is valid, the stress components constitute a stress tensor, but the stress at the sharp concave corner is shown to be discontinuous and double-valued. It is further pointed out that stress transformation formula is not applicable to any point where a stress component has discontinuity or lacks of uniqueness at a surface passing through that point. The tip of any crack is the case.

This is the preface to Calculus II, a textbook to be published by Peking University Press. We explore the purpose and the pedagogy for teaching calculus in theoretical and applied mechanics curriculun.

This paper analyzes the textbooks of mechanics, especially the textbooks and their teaching systems of theoretical mechanics and material mechanics. From the national mechanics courses and texybooks constructed history situation, the achievements and problems of the construction of the mechanics course, national elementary mechanics teaching material usage, the introduction of overseas elementary mechanics textbooks, overseas theoretical mechanics teaching material system analysis, overseas mechanics teaching material system analysis, mechanics courses abroad network resources investigation and analysis, and the teaching technology application and quality evaluation and other aspects are expounded. Finally, through the study of overseas textbooks, due to its comprehensive characteristics and features, for the national elementary mechanics courses and textbooks reform to provide ideas and direction. This paper is one of them, mainly expounds the basic situation of the elementary mechanics textbooks pubilished within China

Classical Mechanics includes Newtonian Mechanics, Lagrangian Mechanics as well as Hamiltonian Mechanics. Fundamental theories of Classical Mechanics are mainly reflected in the course of Theoretical Mechanics in the current framework of higher education. Students majored in science and engineering are mostly intimidated by the complete knowledge hierarchy of Classical Mechanics. By incorporating the history of mechanics in the course, positive feedbacks from students are obtained.

The rapid development of emerging fields such as information technology, micro/nano technology and biotechnology in the 21st century has brought opportunities and challenges to the cultivation of talents in the field of mechanics. This paper briefly introduces the basic concepts and the development of idea of university, as well as its evolution in China. By analyzing the needs of social development and the frontier of mechanics research, it is shown that the cultivation objective for the mechanics undergraduate program should be innovative talents with broad humanistic qualities and profound professional knowledge. Based on the experiences of growing undergraduate students majored in theoretical and applied mechanics in Shanghai University in the past 20 years, this paper presents some suggestions to achieve this goal.

The optimal control is the required course for postgraduates majored in Control Science and Engineering. It is also the degree course for those majored in Mechanics, particularly in the area of dynamics and control. As an elementary course, it has extensive engineering applications with theoretical implications. The focus of this paper is how to improve the teaching and cultivate students' learning interest and innovative ability. The essential problem of the teaching reform, teaching objectives, teaching content and materials are discussed as well as teaching methods. Some measures of the teaching reform, such as the seminar-style teaching and the BOPPPS teaching structure, are successfully applied in the course with good results.

Theoretical mechanics is a basic course for students majored in engineering. To improve the academic challenge level, increase the difficulty of the course, and expand the depth of the course, the course has to be carefully arranged. After the depth and the breadth of basic courses are expanded, the follow-up professional courses are expanded, with regard to the teaching links, the teaching content, the teaching methods, as well as the practice links, to make a "golden class" for the theoretical mechanics.

Chinese characters composed of strokes are the great creation of the Chinese nation. The scientific and rational stroke structure determines the beauty of the font of the character. This paper introduces the concepts of the centroid and the moment of inertia. Through the image processing analysis, the normalized font image centroid and the font structure moment of inertia are obtained. These two parameters are used to quantitatively describe the barycenter and the word weight of the font structure. The proposed method can be used to evaluate the font structure of Chinese characters and provide a reference for Chinese character font design.

Based on the experiences in teaching reform of theoretical mechanics in Sichuan University, this paper mainly focuses on the great potentials of computer application examples in the teaching of theoretical mechanics. This strategy helps students to concentrate on the theories of mechanics by reducing mathematical operations. The batch solutions help students to have an intuitive impression on engineering projects, and the general solutions help students to gain further understanding of solving problems of multiple unknown parameters. Besides, this paper discusses the direction and the purpose of teaching reform, namely, to emphasize the general solutions for solving problems of multiple rigid bodies or parameters with the help of computer. This can help to compile theoretical mechanics textbooks to be better adapted to the development of scientific and technological progress.

In order to analyze the influence of the friction torque change on the measurement of rigid body inertia, the falling body method is used in the experimental analysis. It is indicated that the friction torque increases significantly with the increase of the system rotation speed, if the average rotation speed of the system in the deceleration process is much higher than that in the acceleration process, and if no correction is made, the calculation results are usually relatively small. At the same time, it is pointed out that the average rotation speed in the acceleration process and the deceleration process are relatively close to each other, the measuring value is mainly affected by the random error. The above results are helpful to further study the friction torque variations against the rotational speed.

In this paper, the toppling process of a non-uniform slender rod in the initial vertical stationary position on a horizontal support surface is studied. Based on the motion theorem of the center of mass, the law of conservation of mechanical energy and the theorem of fixed axis rotation, the expression of the bearing force of a straight rod without slip is derived. It is pointed out that the necessary conditions for a straight bar to be separated from the horizontal plane include two requirements: the mass distribution of the straight bar and the minimum static friction coefficient between the straight bar and the supporting surface.

This paper reviews some American textbooks of statics, including the history and the current situation, the origin and the developments, as well as the main contents and the technical details.

The teaching load of lecturers in Dept. of Mechanics of most Chinese universities is usually very heavy due to the arrangement that they have to teach fundamental mechanics courses for all other engineering majors. In view of the new requirements of reduced teaching hours with the contents and the level of knowledge unchanged, cramming teaching to large classes (often over 100 students) seems to be the only choice for most fundamental mechanics course lecturers. In addition, the lecturers may not necessarily understand well the engineering fields of the students of other majors, as their own major is normally mechanics and the communication with teachers at other engineering departments may not be easy, so that they normally teach same things to students of different engineering majors, lack of coherent and integration, lack of long-term retention, without appropriate concepts and ability of applications of fundamental mechanics to their engineering problems. Based on ten years of first-hand teaching experience and discussions with teachers and students from civil and mechanical engineering, the author has adopted a major-oriented teaching of fundamental mechanics courses and presented here in this paper the method and its application.

A visual experimental teaching method for the material failure based on the digital image correlation technique is presented in this paper. Taking the concrete material as an example, this presented method is applied in the splitting tension and uniaxial compression tests. The splitting tensile and compressive failure processes are monitored, and the failure modes are analyzed to reveal the failure mechanisms of the concrete material in the splitting tension and compression. The strain distribution of the specimen is obtained using the digital image correlation method. The above results confirm the failure mechanisms of the concrete material and the applicable failure strength theory.

With the emerging technology of education, a teaching method, uniting the traditional classroom, the online classroom, the rain classroom and the flipped classroom, is discussed in this paper. This teaching method of the "Four-Classroom Integration" and assessment model are used in the course of theoretical mechanics in order to improve the classroom teaching effectiveness. Good teaching results are obtained according to the data of the final exam. This method provides a way of the teaching reform of the contemporary theoretical mechanics classroom.

In view of the teaching characteristics of the Engineering Fluid Mechanics course, the teaching mode of "Theoretical Deduction—Experimental Study—Numerical Simulation—Interactive Case" is proposed. This teaching mode links the related knowledge points, with a variety of methods for explanation. Taking the boundary layer separation phenomenon as an example, the theoretical deduction is used to analyze its mechanism, the experimental method is applied to show the separation phenomenon, the CFD numerical simulation method is used for improving the teaching effect and expanding the knowledge, and the network interaction method is used to improve the learning interest and deepen understanding. The traditional and the emerging technologies are combined and this mode can be used for the teaching of other courses.

The traditional classroom teaching of Mechanics of Materials focuses on the theoretical derivation of formulas, with relatively boring effect. The experimental classes cannot coordinate with the theoretical course, and it is impossible to show the other information than the deformation of the specimen. In order to improve the teaching efficiency, ANSYS is introduced into the classroom of mechanics of materials. Through the animation and contour figures, the deformation and the stress of the basis problems of Mechanics of Materials are presented. With the theoretical formula, it can not only deepen the students' understanding of various mechanical concepts, knowledge points and formulas but also stimulate students' learning interest and innovative thinking. It is helpful for the cultivation of engineering talents.

When the regular diagram multiplication method is applied to compute the displacements of beam structures with variable cross-sections, many difficulties will be encountered, such as too much area blocks, excessive numbers of diagram multiplications, great amount of computation, and low computational efficiency. So a new stiffness-distribution diagram multiplication is proposed to solve these difficulties based on the structural stiffness. Basic formulas are derived with operation principles for their applications. The concept of the new method is very clear and can be understood easily, with the advantages of the diagram multiplication method taken fully. The application and the comparison of a numerical case show that the operation of the stiffness-distribution diagram multiplication method is very simple and reasonable. With the new method, small amount of computation is taken with high efficiency. So it is worth being recommended.