Experimental Mechanics Laboratory

Responsible:
Prof. Luis Sousa

The Laboratory of Experimental Mechanics (LEM) is a key lab that fulfills the growing need of students to enhance their knowledge on Structural and Computational Mechanics from teaching processes, thus transforming the classic lectures into something more appealing and familiar to students. LEM is a didactic lab with a large set of equipment that can be used by the teachers to support their lectures. The experiments possible to be done with the equipment are cataloged and a guide exists to each of those experiments. These include: (i) equilibrium of forces, (ii) elasticity, (iii) bending and shear stresses in beams, (iv) torsion of shafts, (v) deflections in beams, frames and trusses, (vi) buckling of struts and frames, (vii) plasticity of shafts and beams, (viii) plate deflections, (ix) mechanical characterization of materials. Those guides include a description of the equipment, the methodology for the experiment and a theoretical background of the concepts addressed in that experiment.