Course Description

This course is designed for Mechanical Engineering Students who have full senior standing; that is, who have completed the first six semesters of the ME curriculum. It is a prerequisite for the second semester project course MAE 416 - Mechanical Engineering Design.

Course Objectives

The course is divided into two parts. The first part is to finish developing skills in designing mechanical components that began in MAE 316. From there the scope of the course is expanded and addresses the design of several open-ended problems. The emphasis is on detail and system design as well as reporting the results. Specifically, the objectives of the course are as follows:

1. To develop practical and analytical understanding of basic mechanical components.
2. To develop the ability to integrate background developed in the physical sciences, engineering sciences and mathematics to solve real world design problems. Emphasis is placed on open-ended problems that contain superfluous or insufficient information and require the student to find or develop additional data for analysis. Solution techniques will focus on the problem definition, reduction to a solvable system, optimization and development of a design package.
3. To learn the techniques of technical report writing and formal communication of analytical results and design details.

Last updated: August 24, 2005