Development of 3D Animations to teach Resistance of Materials

The impressions of Design students

Gabriel de Souza Prim, Fernando Sharp Jeller, Edmilson Rampazzo Klen
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianpolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

Abstract The resistance of materials is a
branch of mechanics that studies the relations
between external forces applied to a deformable body
as well as the intensity of its internal forces,
calculating the deformations of the rigid body and
studying its stability. Even though it is commonly
studied in the engineering courses, it is also teached in
other courses, like the Design graduation at the
Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianpolis
- Brazil, where it is primarily applied on the scope of
products design. The study of materials resistance is
of great importance in the Design sector in so far that
students develop a knowledge base related to the
resistance of the product not only during the
production processes but also during its entire
lifetime. With this acquired knowledge the designer is
able to better choose the materials to be used for the
products, better estimate its life cycle and minimize
the number of prototypes needed to verify its
resistance. In order to facilitate the understanding by
the students in this discipline, it was proposed the
creation of graphical animations to simulate the
application of forces and the behavior of material.
The graphical animations area a powerful visual tool
which illustrate the theory teached in the classroom,
allowing students to understand better and faster the
concepts of resistance of materials.
Index Terms Resistance of Materials, Design, 3D
Animation.
I. INTRODUCTION
According to Hibbeler, 2004, the resistance of
materials is the branch of mechanics that studies the
relationship between external loads applied to a
deformable body and the intensity of the internal forces
that act into the body also covering the calculation of
deformations of the body and the study of their stability
when subjected to external requests.
The discipline of Resistance of Materials is often
offered to engineering courses, but is also taught in other
courses, such as the Design one at Federal University of
Santa Catarina (UFSC) - Florianopolis, Brazil, where it is
applied mainly in the design products branch.
During the classes of resistance of materials for the
graduation course in Design it was observed that it was a
hard task to several students to visualize the behavior of
the materials when forces were applied, for example, in a
specimen. A great part of the study of resistance of
materials is based on different testing machines operating
with specimens.
This work proposed the creation of graphical
animations that simulate the application of forces and the
behavior of materials in virtual specimens. The main goal
of this initiative is to facilitate and speed up the learning
process by the Design students using graphic animations
to illustrate the theoretical part in a more attractive way
counting on the assistance of charts and diagrams i.e.
making use of powerful visual resources. The animations
are used in the discipline of Resistance of Materials to
assist in the study of loads applied in specimens with
different materials.
II. METHODOLOGY
The method used to carry out this work was developed
by Bruno Munari (1981) and was chosen as it is very
well accepted by the Design sector since it covers, among
others, needs analysis, verification of data collected as
well as available technologies. Nevertheless some
adjustments were made in order to better fit the problem
at hand. Therefore the methodology applied includes the
description of the following topics: (1) the problem, (2)
the components of the problem, (3) data collection, (4)
data analysis, (5) creativity, (6) materials and
technologies, (7) experimentation (8) model, (9)
validation and (10) final results, which are described
below:.

(1) The "problem" of this study was defined as the
difficulty of the resistance of materials students
to visualize the content covered in class.
(2) The "components of the problem" are: the
students, the material available for the class, the
course contents and the lack of adequate graphic
animations.
(3) The "data collection" phase began with a desk
research mainly through internet searches were
no adequate materials were found to cope with
the present problem (primarily videos that
demonstrate physical phenomena presented in
classroom).
(4) The data analysis phase was carried out in
parallel with the data collection. Here some
selected videos were studied in order to serve as
reference for the process of developing new
graphic animations more suitable for the current
problem.
(5) The next step phase, named as "creativity"
phase, served to define the objects to be worked
on motion graphics phase, style, the approach to
the subject and the possibility to work with
animated graphics.
(6) In the "materials and technologies" phase it was
chosen the Autodesk 3Ds Max software to be
used to develop the 3D animations. The choice
of this software was due to its suitability to the
envisaged problem as well as to its availability
and domain of use by the students in charge of
this work.
(7) After defining the software, the phase of
"experimentation" began seeking to test the
different approaches with the same goal. During
this process aspects such as color graphics,
animation speed and size of final video files
were defined.
(8) After defining all the needed experimentation
elements, the graphic animation of the "model
was finalized.
(9) The model was submitted for validation with
students who had participated in the discipline.
This validation phase seeks to realize the ease of
understanding the content and consequently if
the initial goal was reached.
(10) The final results consist of the graphical
animations developed, tested and validated. It
comprises a set of some short videos addressing
the lack of visual elements in the classroom,
aiding the understanding of the subject by the
students.
This methodology aligns the pedagogical design
process as a way of better structuring of the
discipline of Resistance of Materials for Design
course at UFSC.

III. PEDAGOGICAL DESIGN

According to Torrezan & Behar (2008) pedagogical
design is the one that relates graphical and technical
factors (ergonomic and programming) to pedagogical and
learning factors.
Today many digital resources are used in the process
of teaching and learning. Among these resources one can
highlight videos, animations, simulations and learning
objects that are often developed without thinking about
the new ways of learning, occurring only the
digitalization of traditional teaching methods. So these
objects are built without considering the broader factors
of design, and this element is merely used in a decorative
manner (BEHAR et al, 2008).
So in order to build the bridge between graphical and
technical factors in what concerns the discipline of
resistance of materials offered to the Design students of
UFSC, some animations were developed by two students
under the supervision of the Professor of the discipline.
IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANIMATIONS
The animations were developed to support the
pedagogical teaching of the main topics covered by the
discipline of Resistance of Materials: (A) Bending, (B)
Tension Vs Deformation and (C) Twist.
A. Bending - two types of bending were covered: simple
beam (Figure 1 and 2) and cantilever beam (Figure 3 and
4). With the aid of graphic animation it is possible to
demonstrate the behavior of the materials easily. The
three-dimensionality feature allows you to display the
beam interacting while the force is applied at its end.
This visualization allows the student an overview of what
happens with the beam when exposed to external loads.






Fig. 1. Steel simple beam







Fig. 2. Bended steel simple beam
Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4qQVoQCbH8





Fig. 3. Cantilever steel beam





Fig. 4. Bended cantilever steel beam
Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FImicxhFHP4
It was verified the viability of producing animations for
simulating the behavior of the material. The study of
graphics creation has began in order to demonstrate to
students what happens to the materials while undergoing
an increased load.
B. Tension Vs Deformation - Presenting the deformation
of a material facing certain tensions is sometimes
complicated as the material changes its behavior while
tension increases. Firstly the material deforms elastically,
and then there is plastic deformation and the necking of
the material. To display this behavior, the presentation of
graphics is of great importance for the understanding.
With the use of computer animation it was developed the
representation of the deformation of the material while a
graph of tension vs. deformation was showing the curve
of the material behavior (Figure 5 and 6).




Fig. 5. Graph Tension vs Deformation of the specimen




Fig. 6. Graph Tension vs Deformation
Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0onZCJKKtdw
C. Twist To demonstrate the twisting of a beam (Figure
7 and 8) is usually also a challenge for the teacher in the
classroom. This is especially true if the beam has a
circular cross section (Figure 9 and 10) but apparently
nothing happens to the beam when it is twisted. Graphic
animations were developed for rectangular and circular
cross section beams. For the latter it was applied a
checkerboard pattern to the beam thus allowing a clearer
visualization of the behavior of the beam.





Fig. 7. Steel beam (rectangular section)



Fig. 8. Twisted steel beam (rectangular section)
Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfa6qUmM9Pw




Fig. 9. Steel beam (circular section)




Fig. 10. Twisted steel beam (circular section)
Video Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vW1C0MrB8
IV. CONCLUSION
After some desk and internet research it seemed that
there are few videos with a satisfactory resolution and
quality of filming in what concerns the behaviour of
materials subject to external loads. No camera variations
were found or footages with super cameras. In this sense
the use of computer animation is recommended since it
allows playback at various angles and represents a good
relation of cost/benefits.
The use of animations to represent the behavior of
materials under external forces may be considered of a
valuable contribution to the resistance of materials
classes. Bringing this visual resource into the classroom
allows the teacher to show to the students in a more
interactive way how things work.
It is worth to mention that the animations produced in
this work are the result of the work of students who had
previously studied the discipline of Resistance of
Materials. The theoretical content learned in the class
was applied for the development of the animations. This
means that the content was learned in class and deployed
in a practical way. This work has the potential to be
further developed i.e. to increase the number of videos
(addressing other materials, using different sections, in
different environments, etc) raising the portfolio to be
presented in the discipline as well as to involve the
current students of the discipline in the development
itself.

V. REFERENCES
NASH, W. A. Resistncia dos Materiais. Rio de Janeiro:
McGraw-Hill, 2001.

POPOV, E. P. Resistncia dos Materiais. Rio de Janeiro:
Prentice Hall do Brasil, 1984

HIBBELER, R.C., Resistncia dos Materiais, Terceira Edio,
Livros Tcnicos e Cientficos Editora, Rio de Janeiro, 2000.

Ementa UFSC da disciplina EGR 7184 Resistncia dos
Materiais

MUNARI, Bruno. Das coisas nascem coisas. Lisboa:
Edies 70, 1981.

BEHAR, Patricia Alejandra; TORREZZAN, Cristina Alba
Wildt; RCKERT, Augusto Bergamaschi. PEDESIGN: a
construo de um objeto de aprendizagem baseado no design
pedaggico. Revistas Novas tecnologias, v.6 N 2. Dez 2008.

TORREZZAN, Cristina Alba Wildt. BEHAR, Patricia
Alejandra. Design Pedaggico de Materiais Educacionais
Digitais. In: V Congresso Brasileiro de Ensino Superior a
Distncia, Gramado, 2008.

GAGNE, Robert M. Principles of Instructional Design.
Wadsworth Publishing. 2004.