Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design

Design

• To design is either to formulate a plan for the satisfaction of a specified need or to solve a specific 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
• The engineering designer has to be personally comfortable with a decision-making
• 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
• A designer’s personal resources of creativeness, communicative ability, and problem solving skill are intertwined with the 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.

Mechanical Engineering Design

• Mechanical engineering design involves all the disciplines of mechanical engineering
• mechanics of solids and fluids, 
• mass and momentum transport, 
• manufacturing processes, and 
• electrical and information theory.
• For example, simple journal bearing involves
• Fluid flow, 
• heat transfer, 
• friction, 
• energy transport, 
• material selection, 
• Thermomechanical treatments, 
• statistical descriptions, 
• and so on