Mechanical Engineering Design

Mechanical engineers are associated with the production and processing of energy and with providing the means of production, the tools of transportation, and the techniques of automation. The skill and knowledge base are extensive. Among the disciplinary bases are mechanics of solids and fluids, mass and momentum transport, manufacturing processes, and electrical and information theory. Mechanical engineering design involves all the disciplines of mechanical engineering.

Real problems resist compartmentalization. A simple journal bearing involves fluid flow, heat transfer, friction, energy transport, material selection, thermomechanical treatments, statistical descriptions, and so on. A building is environmentally controlled. The heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning considerations are sufficiently specialized that some speak of heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning design as if it is separate and distinct from mechanical engineering design. Similarly, internal-combustion engine design, turbomachinery design, and jet-engine design are sometimes considered discrete entities. Here, the leading string of words preceding the word design is merely a product descriptor. Similarly, there are phrases such as machine design, machine-element design, machine-component design, systems design, and fluid-power design. All of these phrases are somewhat more focused examples of mechanical engineering design. They all draw on the same bodies of knowledge, are similarly organized, and requiresimilar skills.

Design

To design is either to formulate a plan for the satisfaction of a specified need or to solve a problem. If the plan results in the creation of something having a physical reality, then the product must be functional, safe, reliable, competitive, usable, manufacturable, and marketable.

Design is an innovative and highly iterative process. It is also a decision-making process. Decisions sometimes have to be made with too little information, occasionally with just the right amount of information, or with an excess of partially contradictory information. Decisions are sometimes made tentatively, with the right reserved to adjust as more becomes known. The point is that the engineering designer has to be personally comfortable with a decision-making, problem-solving role.

Design is a communication-intensive activity in which both words and pictures are used, and written and oral forms are employed. Engineers have to communicate effectively and work with people of many disciplines. These are important skills, and an engineer’s success depends on them.

A designer’s personal resources of creativeness, communicative ability, and problem solving skill are intertwined with knowledge of technology and first principles. Engineering tools (such as mathematics, statistics, computers, graphics, and languages) are combined to produce a plan that, when carried out, produces a product that is functional, safe, reliable, competitive, usable, manufacturable, and marketable, regardless of who builds it or who uses it.