“Feeling” young modulus of materials

Abstract

Stiffness is a structural property to be considered in product design and optimization, operations that are, at present, the industry's universal goals. The stiffness of a body is associated with the Young modulus of its material. Therefore, the Young modulus is of great relevance and the evaluation of this material property is important at education or at training levels. A flexible material is associated to a low Young modulus and a stiff material to a high Young modulus. So, in the first case, low loads are able to cause an elastic deformation and in the second case, higher loads are needed for inducing it. The association of tactile information to a bending test using similar specimens of different materials will provide to the user sensorial information on their Young modulus. A virtual reality software application with haptic interaction has been developed for training users “to feel the Young modulus of materials”. The virtual reality application and its structure will be described in this work. Finally, perspectives on future work will be presented.