MDSolids

MDSolids is educational software for the topics taught in the Mechanics of Materials course, also called Strength of Materials or Mechanics of Deformable Solids, which is part of civil, mechanical and aerospace engineering programs. It was written by Timothy A. Philpot of Missouri University of Science and Technology, and it won the 1998 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. The program also includes modules for several topics of the Statics course.

Features:

1. Beams – the Determinate Beams module builds shear-force and bending-moment diagrams for beams, and the Flexure module calculates bending stresses in flexural members.

MDSolids helps engineering students solve and visualize typical Mechanics of Materials problems with dedicated modules and animations.

2. Axial structures – routines for axial assemblies, including statically indeterminate axial structures, plus a Trusses module for planar truss analysis.

3. Torsion – analysis of torsional assemblies such as shafts and shaft systems loaded by torques.

4. Section properties – centroids, moments of inertia and other cross-section properties, with tables of standard steel shapes, including European and British wide-flange, channel and hollow sections.

5. Mohr's circle – stress transformations and strain transformations with an interactive Mohr's circle.

6. Other modules – pressure vessels, combined loadings, column buckling with current AISC column design formulas, a stress-strain routine and a General Analysis module for axial, torsion and beam members.

7. Problem Library – a separate module with a library of typical problems, available from the Modules menu next to the other routines.

8. Learning tools – detailed help documents and the MecMovies animated learning tools, which explain shear-moment diagrams, centroids, moments of inertia, stress transformations and Mohr's circle step by step.

9. Full version – file open and save for single modules or whole sessions, printing, bitmap capture, Excel (.xls) output from the stress-strain, section properties and general analysis routines, custom material lists and SI or US units.

10. Platform and licence – MDSolids runs on Windows only; the last release is 4.1.0. The Philpot family offers the full version free of charge: the program works for 30 days until the free registration code published on the MDSolids website is entered.