MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Mechanical engineering is the
application of physical principles to the creation of useful devices, objects and machines.
Mechanical engineers use principles such as heat, force, and the conservation of mass
and energy to analyze static and dynamic physical systems, in contributing to the design
of things such as automobiles, aircraft, and other vehicles, heating and cooling systems,
household appliances, industrial equipment and machinery, weapons systems, etc.
Fundamental subjects of mechanical engineering include: dynamics, statics, strength
of materials, hydraulics, kinematics, and applied thermodynamics. Mechanical engineers
should understand and be able to apply concepts from the chemistry and electrical engineering fields.
Engineers in this field design, test, build, and operate machinery of all types; they
also work on a variety of manufactured goods and certain kinds of structures. The field is
divided into machinery, mechanisms, materials, hydraulics, and pneumatics; and heat as
applied to engines, work and energy, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning. The mechanical
engineer, therefore, must be trained in mechanics, hydraulics, and thermodynamics
and must know such subjects as metallurgy and machine design.
A mechanical engineer designs not only the machines that make products but the products
themselves, and must design for both economy and efficiency.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Automotive engineering is a branch of Vehicle engineering. It incorporates
elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied
to the design, manufacture and operation of automobiles, buses and trucks and
engineering subsystems.
Automotive engineers are involved in almost every aspect of designing cars and
trucks. Broadly speaking automotive engineers are separated into three main streams:
product engineering, development engineering and manufacturing engineering.
- Product engineer (also called design engineer), that would design
components/systems (i.e brake engineer and battery engineer).
- Development engineer, that engineers the attributes of the automobile.
- Manufacturing engineer determines how to make it.
A Development Engineer is a job function within Automotive Engineering, in
which the development engineer has the responsibility for coordinating delivery of the
engineering attributes of a complete automobile (bus, car, truck, etc.).
APPLIED MECHANICS
Mechanics is a branch of physical science which considers the effect of forces
upon the motion or upon the conditions of material bodies.
Applied mechanics is a part of mechanics. It includes the laws of mechanics to be
applied to the motions of particles and of rigid bodies as used in problems of engineering.
The condition of rest is considered to be the limiting condition of motion.
The subject of applied mechanics may be divided into two parts statics and dynamics,
and dynamics may be further divided into kinematics and kinetics. It is statics
that treats bodies in equilibrium, and dynamics that treats the particles and bodies in motion.
Kinematics is the part of dynamics to treat the motion of particles and rigid bodies
without reference to the forces that produce or change the motion. Kinetics is the part of
dynamics to treat the motion of material bodies which are changed by the application of
forces.There are three common methods of analysis of problems: the graphic method, the
trigonometric method and the algebraic one.
PROPERTIES OF M E T A L S A N D THEIR USES
The selection of the proper metal or alloy for a given use is an important part of the
practice of metallurgy. Because iron and steel are used in larger quantities than any of the
other metals, it is common practice to divide materials into ferrous and nonferrous.
- Strength, ease of shaping and relatively low cost are of greatest importance for
major structural purposes. For these purposes steel is ideally suited. For automobile parts,
and wherever greater strength and toughness are required, more expensive special steels
are used.
- Metals light in weight - For making different machine parts, and in other applications
where strength must be combined with light weight, metals such as aluminum or
magnesium and their alloys are used.
- Softness. Ease in bending - For uses requiring softness and ease in bending, as in
cable-sheathing and where certain chemical properties are needed, lead and its alloys
may be employed.