Page 35 - Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design

bud29281_ch01_002-030.qxd 11/11/2009 5:35 pm Page 10 pinnacle s-171:Desktop Folder:Temp Work:Don't Delete (Jobs):MHDQ196/Budynas:

10 Mechanical Engineering Design
This list is not complete. The reader is urged to explore the various sources of
information on a regular basis and keep records of the knowledge gained.

1–5 The Design Engineer’s Professional Responsibilities
In general, the design engineer is required to satisfy the needs of customers (man-
agement, clients, consumers, etc.) and is expected to do so in a competent, responsi-
ble, ethical, and professional manner. Much of engineering course work and practical
experience focuses on competence, but when does one begin to develop engineering
responsibility and professionalism? To start on the road to success, you should start
to develop these characteristics early in your educational program. You need to cul-
tivate your professional work ethic and process skills before graduation, so that
when you begin your formal engineering career, you will be prepared to meet the
challenges.
It is not obvious to some students, but communication skills play a large role here,
and it is the wise student who continuously works to improve these skills—even if it
is not a direct requirement of a course assignment! Success in engineering (achieve-
ments, promotions, raises, etc.) may in large part be due to competence but if you can-
not communicate your ideas clearly and concisely, your technical proficiency may be
compromised.
You can start to develop your communication skills by keeping a neat and clear
journal/logbook of your activities, entering dated entries frequently. (Many companies
require their engineers to keep a journal for patent and liability concerns.) Separate
journals should be used for each design project (or course subject). When starting a
project or problem, in the definition stage, make journal entries quite frequently. Others,
as well as yourself, may later question why you made certain decisions. Good chrono-
logical records will make it easier to explain your decisions at a later date.
Many engineering students see themselves after graduation as practicing engineers
designing, developing, and analyzing products and processes and consider the need of
good communication skills, either oral or writing, as secondary. This is far from the
truth. Most practicing engineers spend a good deal of time communicating with others,
writing proposals and technical reports, and giving presentations and interacting with
engineering and nonengineering support personnel. You have the time now to sharpen
your communication skills. When given an assignment to write or make any presenta-
tion, technical or nontechnical, accept it enthusiastically, and work on improving your
communication skills. It will be time well spent to learn the skills now rather than on
the job.
When you are working on a design problem, it is important that you develop a
systematic approach. Careful attention to the following action steps will help you to
organize your solution processing technique.
• Understand the problem. Problem definition is probably the most significant step in the
engineering design process. Carefully read, understand, and refine the problem statement.
• Identify the knowns. From the refined problem statement, describe concisely what
information is known and relevant.
• Identify the unknowns and formulate the solution strategy. State what must be deter-
mined, in what order, so as to arrive at a solution to the problem. Sketch the compo-
nent or system under investigation, identifying known and unknown parameters.
Create a flowchart of the steps necessary to reach the final solution. The steps may
require the use of free-body diagrams; material properties from tables; equations