In order to design and plan buildings and engineering structures, it is essential to analyze the supporting structures and thus calculate the loads that occur and the resulting forces in the system. The load-bearing capacity of the structure must be verified. For a prospective civil engineer, training in structural mechanics is an essential part of the course. Students need a great deal of practice in order to consolidate the knowledge they have acquired and to gain experience in structural analysis.

As part of the FAssMII project sub-project B, digital exercises are being created in the ONYX environment for the field of mechanics. The tasks are sorted by subject area and level of difficulty so that students can select the appropriate tasks based on their experience.  Additionally the exercises contain valuable feedback. By trying several solutions, students can find the right solution themselves. The feedback is set up on several levels and tailored precisely to the respective static system of the task. 

The aim of the FAssMII project is also to establish an ONYX task pool for the field of mechanics. The OPAL / ONYX system is used at universities throughout Saxony and teachers and students can jointly contribute to this task pool and benefit together. A sample task has been published to provide a brief insight.

If you are interested in published tasks in the ONYX task pool and participation in the mechanics network, please contact us!

Furthermore, a framework program for calculating internal forces and deformations is being developed in the Python programming environment. Although there are already numerous commercial programs of this type, none of them are tailored to the teaching of structural mechanics. In most cases, the programs are very extensive and complex, making it difficult to concentrate on the essentials.

The developed framework program should offer several advantages:

• Students can check their exercises themselves, and all intermediate results of the manual calculation methods will be available in the future.
• As part of FAssMII sub-project B, an ONYX task pool for mechanics is being created. In future, the framework program will output the exact values and relative errors (from rounding) required to create the tests.
• The graphics of the loads, internal forces and deformations are presented in a very appealing way so that they can be used in ONYX tests.
• Students can view the code in full and understand how computer-oriented structural analysis works. Bachelor's and Master's theses are also used to further develop the program. The students can thus expand their programming skills.

FAssMII-Website