2021

Professor when you took the course: Prof. Nagamani Jaya Balila and Prof. Anirban Patra

Motivation behind the course: This course builds upon another sophomore year course, MM 203: Mechanics of Materials. Concepts taught in MM 203 are utilized to develop further understanding about the mechanical properties of materials. The course provides various aspects to the mechanical properties also focusing on their application in the real-world.

Course Content: The course was divided into two parts. The first part being taken by Prof. Patra and the second half by Prof. Balila. A brief course content summary is given below.

Introduction: Tensile test and basics of deformation and fracture in metals, ceramics, polymers and composites Elastic behavior: Generalized Hooke’s law, Stress and strain tensors and Anisotropic elasticity, Viscoelasticity Plastic deformation in single and polycrystalline materials and its relationship to yield theories Dislocation theory: Line defects, properties and motion of dislocations, dislocation interactions Strengthening mechanisms in metals: Taylor (dislocation) hardening, grain boundary, solid solution, fiber, precipitates; cold working, annealing effects Fracture: Fracture mechanics, fracture mechanism maps, toughening mechanisms, environment assisted fracture, fractography Cyclic Deformation (Fatigue): S-N diagram, Paris law, Design against fatigue, Stress assisted cracking, embrittlement High-temperature deformation (Creep): Dislocation and diffusional creep, superplasticity, deformation mechanism map

Pre-requisites: None

Feedback on Lectures and Teaching: The course ran in a flipped classroom mode. Weekly lectures were uploaded and we were supposed to watch them over the weekend and participate in discussions/doubts. A graded tutorial took place each week which is where I felt most of the learning happened. The lectures were quite detailed, describing each process in depth and also cited examples of real-world applications. Doubt sessions had good discussions. Since things got a bit more mathematical as the course progressed, the doubt classes and tutorials really helped in understanding the course content.

Feedback on evaluation process: The evaluation process was distributed and had various components to it. Short 10 min Moodle quizzes every week based on the content of the week before. All tutorials were graded and required us to submit the solved questions along with attending the session and discussing the problems. A term paper presentation took place at the end which had really interesting topics and some great discussions. There was no midsem, the endsem was divided into two parts corresponding to the halves in the course. All in all, this course required us to be on our toes the whole time.

Difficulty level: 4

How is the Grading? :Grading was good. Standard relative grading was followed. Majority of the class received BB or above.

Any other comments: The course was really fun, the professors were very understanding. I would suggest being regular in this course as that is the most important thing. Everything else comes easily.

Reference Textbooks: George E. Dieter - Mechanical Metallurgy, Derek Hull, D. J. Bacon - Introduction to Dislocations

Thanks to Hrithik Agrawal for writing this course review

2017

Professor when you took the course: Prof Nagamani Jaya Balila

Motivation behind the course: This is a compulsory core course to get a degree. It provides students an idea of how dislocation generation and interaction can alter the mechanical properties to significant extent. This course is a supplementary course to various labs and subsequent courses.

Prerequisites: None

Course content: The course content revolves around behaviour of materials ( Failure, fatigue, stress concentration etc) for different material applications. This course is meant to give an overview of a material’s mechanical properties and aligns well mechanical testing laboratory course to give a practical approach as well.

Feedback on lectures, labs, tutorials, assignments and exams: Since ours was the first year of teaching for the instructor, she struggled a little with delivering the lectures properly. The lecture slides did not include a comprehensive study of the topics. Tutorials were helpful and graded. The exams were a mixture of theoretical as well as application based questions. The course can be a refreshing change from the usual “Theoretical Meta” courses like Thermodynamics and Phase transformations.

Difficulty level: 3/5

Grading statistics: The grading was overall quite chill with a good number of 10s and 9s. The professor followed relative grading for this course.

Study Material and References: Every slide had a mention of the relevant books for the individual topics. Also, T Courtney and Dieter are good reads.

Thanks to Balreen Saini for writing this course review

2016

Professor when you took the course: Prita Pant

Feedback on lectures: The course is very basic in the beginning and moves away from MM203 just before the midsems introducing new concepts. The speed of teaching is too fast, so miss one lecture and you will be blank in the next. 80% attendance in mandatory, lack of which implies deduction of 1 mark for every 2% decrease in attendance. This year however she reduce it to 75% to increase the number of students who pass.

Feedback on tutorials, assignments and exams: Tutorials are graded and may contain ~5% weightage. Examination is based on the problems from the tutorial or previous years papers. There will be 1 or 2 problems that will be completely new otherwise the paper is like tutorial on,y difficulty raised a little bit. Endsem has all the new questions and is tougher than all the other exams.

Study Material and References: Courtney Dieter(do not buy this as only one chapter is taught from this book)

Difficulty: Moderate

Thanks to Pratik Mapuskar for writing this course review

Professor when you took the course: Prita Pant

Motivation behind the course: The course forms the foundation of the materials approach to differentiate the various resulting mechanical strengths in a material. It provides the students an idea of how dislocation generation and interaction can alter the mechanical properties to significant extent. This course is a supplementary course to various labs and subsequent courses.

Pre requisites: No pre requisites needed. However, you have an edge in the course if you have the knowledge of Mechanics of Materials (MM 203).

Feedback on lectures: The course kick starts with basic mechanics of stress and strain, but gets traction after the midsems. Te pace of instruction is too fast to catch up if you miss/bunk any classes. 80% attendance in mandatory, lack of which implies deduction of 1 mark for every 2% decrease in attendance.

Feedback on tutorials, assignments and exams: Tutorials are graded and may contain ~5% weightage. Examination is based on the problems from the tutorial. They are either directly picked up or altered to some extent. Professor however lays notable stress on generating one problem in the exam which is completely original.

Difficulty level: Moderately Difficult

How is the grading?: Prof. follows normal distribution for grading. However passing cutoff is highly relative to allow students to clear the course.

Study Material and References: Mechanical Behaviour of Materials - Thomas J. Courtney

Thanks to Ugam Kamat for writing this course review