Introduction to Structural Mechanics

This lecture covers example problems, superposition, and an introduction to buckling and instability in mechanical systems. It delves into beam bending, stiffness, and curvature, using OCR-extracted slides from the Spring 2021 session at EPFL. The content includes moment-curvature relation, bending stiffness, and the concept of curvature K=1. The lecture explores the radius of curvature, the area moment of inertia, and the process of integrating to obtain the moment. It also discusses the relationship between deflection and bending stiffness for different beam shapes, such as rectangular and circular beams.