An Introduction to Stress and Strain

This video is an introduction to stress and strain, which are fundamental concepts that are used to describe how an object responds to externally applied loads. Stress is a measure of the distribution of internal forces that develop within a body to resist these applied loads. There are two main types of stress - normal stress, which acts perpendicular to a surface, and shear stress, which acts parallel to a surface. Strain is a measure of the displacements that occurs within a body. Again we have both normal and shear stresses. In this video I also discuss stress-strain curves, which define how stress and strain are related. Different materials have different stress-strain curves, which can be determined by performing a tensile test. The stress state at a single point within a body is actually made up components in both the normal and the shear directions. I explore this idea at the end of the video but looking at stresses obtained when we cut a bar using an inclined plane