Materials & Structures Calculators
Four calculators for how materials respond to load — stress, strain, stiffness and the reactions in a loaded beam.
Stress, strain and stiffness in one sentence
Stress is the load a material carries per unit area; strain is how much it deforms as a proportion of its original length; Young's modulus is the ratio between the two, and therefore the material's stiffness. Work them out with the Stress Calculator, the Strain Calculator and the Young's Modulus — and note that all three describe the elastic region only, before any permanent deformation begins.
Why strain has no units
Strain is a length divided by a length, so it cancels to a pure number — usually a very small one, which is why it is often quoted in microstrain (10⁻⁶) or as a percentage. Stress, by contrast, is force over area, in pascals, and structural values are large enough that MPa and GPa are the working units.
From a beam to a stress
The Beam Load gives support reactions and the maximum bending moment for a simply supported beam. That moment is the input to a bending-stress check — divide by the section modulus and you have the stress the material must survive, which is where the elastic tools above take over.
These are teaching tools, not design tools
Every calculator here uses idealised, simply supported, statically determinate cases with no safety factors, no buckling check and no fatigue. Real structural design is governed by codes such as the Eurocodes and must be signed off by a qualified engineer. Use these to understand and check, never to specify.