Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

Fall 10-14-2020

Abstract

The delivery of a structural analysis module to architectural or civil engineering students needs the visualization of certain diagrams, such as the internal force diagrams and the elastic line. These diagrams are difficult to grasp for students new to structural analysis and need a lot of practice to become proficient in drawing them. Current structural analysis textbooks with electronic platforms do not include tools to draw the internal force diagrams or deflection. This has led to the initiative of creating an online structural analysis tool to enable the student to easily apply different loadings on different statical systems to draw the internal force diagram or the elastic line. The online tool is easy to navigate, using dropdown menus to choose the structural system and sliders to specify the parameters. It can be implemented during online lectures to demonstrate diagrams to the students and in assessments where students can easily apply the tool to visualize the required diagram and check their calculations. Other smart questions can be adopted by the teacher which need a lot of manual calculations that are not practical during the assessment’s limited time. This smart assessment is now doable using the structural analysis tool. This tool has further been extended as a mobile application which can be used offline. The tool can be enlarged to accommodate more complicated structures and loading conditions. The tool’s effectiveness over that of software packages is the simultaneous interaction in the user interface.

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