Section 10 of 21

Mechanics of Materials

Stress, strain, torsion, beams, and columns

What the section holds

Uniaxial stress-strain behaviour and its definitions, thermal deformations, cylindrical pressure vessels, general stress and strain including transformation, torsion and torsional strain, beams, columns, elastic strain energy, and tabulated material properties.

Why it matters for your exam

Examined on Civil, Mechanical and Other Disciplines specifications, where Other Disciplines calls it strength of materials. The beam deflection and column buckling material here is reached from the structural design pages constantly.

How to navigate it

The beam tables and the column material are at the end of the section, after torsion. The material properties table is the very last thing in it. Practice landing on that table directly, since it is what you need for a modulus of elasticity.

Search terms that land here

mohr's circle | beam deflection | column buckling | torsion | pressure vessel

Subsections, in handbook order

These are the headings the handbook itself uses. The page number beside each is where it begins.

  • Definitionsp129
  • Uniaxial Stress-Strainp129
  • Cylindrical Pressure Vesselp130
  • Thermal Deformationsp130
  • Stress and Strainp131
  • Torsionp133
  • Torsional Strainp133
  • Beamsp134
  • Columnsp136
  • Elastic Strain Energyp137
  • Material Propertiesp137

Disciplines that use this section

Practise finding it

21 drill items in the corpus have this section as their answer.

Start a round

Page numbers here are read from handbook version 10.5 (seventh printing, April 2025), which runs to 502 pages. NCEES revises the handbook and page numbers move with it, which is why the drill asks which section a topic lives in rather than which page. Check the version of your own copy, downloaded free from NCEES.