The usefulness of statics VS dynamics knowledge in mechatronics

Femme_physics

In my practical engineer degree for mechatronics, our technical mechanics test consists of 80% statics questions and 20% dynamic questions. I'm curious, why does statics appear to be more important than dynamic in this engineering discipline?

Unrest

How does "technical mechanics" fit into the whole degree course?

Statics is more important than dynamics in the sense that you need an understanding of statics to analyse either a static or a dynamic mechanical system. Even if it has moving parts, sometimes you can ignore dynamic behavior or just do a quick check to see that it's safe to ignore.

I'm sure you'll have courses devoted to control systems which may be more the focus of mechatronics than the vibration modes of structures.

Femme_physics

Sorry for the late coming, but thanks for the reply

Studiot

You know that a 3D analysis can often be reduced to a 2D one by suitable choice of viewpoint.

In similar fashion we can often reduce a dynamic situation to a quasi-static one by suitable choice of coordinate system (viewpoint).

Some examples:

An analysis of a rotating disk made from the point of view of an observer sitting on the disk, and therefore going round with it, is quasi- static in that we can ignore the rotational motion of the disk adding a central 'force' if necessary.

The support reaction for a drive shaft is going to be the same whatever speed the shaft is doing, or even if the shaft is actually turning at all.

In fluid flow if a 'steady state' is achieved we can ignore the dynamics of the flow for the purposes of calculating energy transfer.

Engineers are tricky individuals - they are always seeking to reduce the complexity of the maths by any trick they can invent.

go well