What is Mechanical Engineering | Subject | Concentration and Jobs Role.
Apart from any another engineering branch, Mechanical Engineering has wide Scope. but if you had any doubt while choosing mechanical engineering as carrier! Then your are at right place In this article we are gone to Discus on the basics of mechanical Engineering, Subjects and concentration and their Jobs Role.
Table Of Content
○ What is Mechanical Engineering
○ Jobs Roles
○ Subject's
- Thermodynamics
- Fluid Mechanics
- Vibration Class's
- Engineering drawing
○ Concentration in Mechanical Engineering
○ Carrier Scope
○ Conclusion
What is Mechanical Engineering?
Mechanical Engineering is branch of Engineering that deals with research, design, analyse and Manufacturing of machines and its components. It is the one of the oldest and broadest field of Engineering and highly focused on physics and mathematics, especially calculus.
Jobs In Mechanical Engineering
The one of the greatest thing about Mechanical Engineering is that its highly versatile and Providing highest number of opportunity to its graduates.
Students who graduate as a mechanical engineering major can go into construction, automotive, heating & air-conditioning, materials, robotics, work in the energy sector, combustion engines and many more.
Students who graduate as a mechanical engineering major can go into construction, automotive, heating & air-conditioning, materials, robotics, work in the energy sector, combustion engines and many more.
Important Subject Of Mechanical Engineer's
Statics
The first main class of mechanical engineering would be statics. where you'll look at the physics of systems that aren't moving. this would be like looking at the forces and torques in something like a truss, that holds up a bridge. where you have to analyze the forces that individual beams feel due to external forces.
Dynamics
Then, the next class would be dynamics. where you look at systems that are moving. it's similar to your high school physics classes - projectile motion, momentum energy forces and more. but, there it is much more involved. you look at the motion of much more complex systems, have to find things like velocity acceleration, energy, force and more of different parts of that system.
then in your next year you even take a more advanced version of this class, or you look at these complex systems, but now in three dimensions. so, as you can probably already see mechanical engineering involves a lot of advanced physics.
Fluid Mechanics
In this course you'll learn the properties and mechanics of fluids(such as air and water).
this class is calculus based for example, you could study how the pressure of water changes as, it flows through a set of pipes in a closed environment as height and pipe dimensions change's. the principles to solve this are foundational for how your car brakes work.
this class also includes the physics of how wind turbines work and why they are made, the way, they are, so that they move as much as possible from any amount of wind, and you could analyze why different shapes are better or worse. if you had any interests airplanes, you can even learn how wind flows over a wing to produce aerodynamic force. which also applies to car aerodynamics(which if optimized increases cars mpg).
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics deals with the relations between heat and other forms of energy, such as mechanical electrical or chemical.
In this class you'll study about the combustion engine. which applies to cars boats and aircrafts, and you'll learn these engines in great depth and see how they are constantly making adjustments to make them more efficient and learn at how the first steam engine was created, and aso you will learn how similar ideas are still being used in power plants today, to produce energy to power your TV, turn on your lights and power your appliances.
Vibration Class's
In vibration class's you'll analyze the mechanical vibrations, that occur in different objects.
Think about, if you were to drop a metal object. when it hits the ground you might observe or even hear it vibrating, will in mechanical systems like planes, cars, satellites and more that are moving. but, also contain parts like motors and engines that are also moving at very high speeds. it's important to analyze the system even down to the vibrations to ensure the system can withstand those vibrations that occur.
Have you ever seen in movies a person make a high-pitched note and it causes something like a glass to shatter. that's because the sound is making the glass vibrate at just the right frequency called the natural frequency(that makes it shattered). buildings even need to account for this because, in the case of an earthquake the building will shake and vibrations will be created.
the building in Japan that was structurally built to a stand high winds and strong earthquakes from causing strong vibrations. one thing they did was put something called a tuned mass damper near the top of the building, and that is something that has engineered used to reduce mechanical vibrations, that can actually save the building from destruction, during natural disasters.
In 1940, the Tacoma bridge collapsed. and what they found afterwards was the vibrations occurred due to interactions between the bridge and the wind. which just kept amplifying until it fell apart. like most mechanical engineering classes, this one is highly calculus-based. because you have to model very complex systems and motion.
Engineering Design
These are kind of a combination of materials engineering and mechanical engineering. we will look at the strength and durability of different materials mechanisms and structures. that's a mechanical engineer someone might tell you they need a certain motor to make a million cycles without braking, or maybe they needed to run for 10 years without braking. this could even apply to just how much weight can a beam support before braking and how much stress is a subject - with a certain amount of weight.
Now besides mechanical engineering classes, you'll take a little bit of everything basically. you have to take a few electrical engineering classes to learn about the basics of circuits and possibly some of the basics of electronics as well. you have to do a little programming and become decently proficient in MATLAB, which is a software that allows you to create plots and graphs and do complicated math way beyond what your graphing calculator can do. you'll possibly have to do a welding class, then of course you have to take about two years of math mostly calculus and about one year of physics.
Concentration In Mechanical Engineering
Now, there are few concentrations within mechanical engineering. a few specific ones include are:
- HVAC
- Mechatronics
- Manufacturing
HVAC(heating and ventilation, air conditioning)
HVAC goes into more vehicle and indoor comfort using your knowledge of fluids, thermodynamics and heat transfer.
An HVAC concentration leads to working on maintaining heat and ventilated air in something like a large commercial building, cars, apartment buildings, homes, hospitals, hotels and more. where you'll have to understand how heat travels throughout the building and different materials. when you see those ducts in large buildings, those have to be carefully placed in order to ensure comfort throughout the whole building by knowledge of thermodynamics and air flow. now it may not seem like it, but seeing how these systems actually work can actually be pretty involved.
Mechatronics
Mechatronics is like the combination of mechanical engineering electronics and some Computer Engineering.
As a mechanical engineer, when it comes to robotics you'd be able to build the robot structurally and make sure it can withstand a certain amount of force. but, with mechatronics you dive more into also the programming and circuiting of the robot. so, with a mechatronics concentration you'd basically have all the sub-disciplines necessary to build circuit and program a robot and this is applications an embedded system, sensing and controls robotics and more.
Manufacturing
The manufacturing concentration is a little more broad. because, you can learn things from the design of a part to the actual materials used for the part. manufacturing might involve learning techniques that help you predict, when a certain part will fail. this major will be helpful in teaching you that slight alterations in design or material of a part can have a drastic impact on the overall price, which becomes an important component in the design and manufacturing of parts lay to profit margins and running a business.
Now, these are just some examples of concentrations. but, there are many more sub disciplines and as a mechanical engineer, you have a lot of flexibility.
As a mechanical engineer, you could work on cars. but, to be more specific you could work on improving the engine to make it more efficient, you could work on the suspension of the car to ensure can handle the forces of the car subject to like could it handle going over a speed bump too fast, or you can do crash testing and look at the materials and structure of the car, to see what it can face up to and how it would have an effect on a individual inside the car or you can possibly analyze how air flows over or through the car and optimize its aerodynamics properties to make insure it go faster, by using your knowledge of fluids classes and this same principle could be even applied on plane or drones.
A mechanical engineer could may also work with biomedical engineers on matters like prosthetic body parts. they might need to help make sure the mechanism is strong enough to understand the forces they'll have to put up with or they might have decided what's the best material to use.
Mechanical engineers can also work on the Research and Development of alternative forms of energy. like, on wind farms hydroelectric solar and more. They can also work on design and development of satellites, robotics, weaponry, machines and the list just goes on.
Conclusion
As you can see mechanical engineers really have no limits to what they can see in their career. Hopefully, this article might helps you to take decision. whether, you have to choose mechanical engineering as carrier or not!
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