VelocityGirl

Hi Math Princess, Mechanical engineering may be a good option for you. If you're concerned more so with maths than designing buildings you'd definitely enjoy it. I'm in my third year of a mechanical engineering degree and I'd say the majority of our classes have involved a fair bit of maths. There is a lot of physics too but it's usually pretty easy to see the applications of it, e.g. in mechanics of materials at the minute. In terms of "art", creativity is encouraged in our course and we have to do design projects, some of which include prototyping but ALL of which include concept sketching and CAD/Solidworks. It's all really about knowing what is possible in terms of the theory behind it and using that knowledge in maths, physics etc. to design products or adjust current products to be stronger, more efficient, etc. so just learning off formulae isn't really what it's all about (although in any field of engineering I'd say knowing that stuff by heart helps! ) Hope this helps. If you'd like to know anything else about mechanical engineering feel free to ask and I'll do my best to help

Hey guys. I'm currently finishing up a lab report on fatigue testing and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on sources of experimental error? I'm assuming it'll probably come down to calibration but any insights would be appreciated. Cheers!

Yep, kinda thought the same thing myself when I saw this post...generators are basically just motors in reverse so they work on the basis of magnetic fields anyway, right? Not quite sure what the idea is behind this but I'm intrigued (planning to do sustainable design next year!).

I'm in my final year of an ordinary degree in mechanical engineering. Thanks for the help guys, ended up just writing what I could for it in terms of how much I understood. I didn't need to go really in depth but it'd have been nice if the lecturer would've covered it with us to save any confusion!

Hey, thanks for the reply. I actually have seen that website already, I understand that they're strain-life curves, what I wanted to know was if there's a simple explaination of how they're created? The theory seems fairly complicated if you've never covered it. We have to draw an S-N curve so I understand the theory for that (basically what is the lab procedure to draw an E-N curve?), are the two similar? Thanks!

Hi guys, I'm writing a lab report on fatigue testing and have been asked to discuss methods of predicting fatigue failure. After researching this I came across a method called E-N curves, which we haven't covered in our class (we're using S-N curves) so I was wondering if anyone can explain E-N curves to me simply? Thanks!

Hey guys. I've been asked to design a steam power plant for a college assignment. I understand most of what I'm doing, but I was wondering what are general values for the minimum and maximum pressures and temperatures which can be handled by a typical boiler, condenser and turbine? Would be useful when choosing values. Thanks.

I would answer this but I'm Irish and I'm assuming that's not an option...

I meant to write "effectiveness", not "efficiency" Bit silly really! Yes generally other things would characterise it but I'm doing a lab report and am supposed to discuss this. It's ok now though, I found a graph of NTU against effectiveness and managed to read values from that to see if the results I had were within a decent range, they seem spot on You said it's easy to minimize heat loss - how would you go about that? (I'm currently writing about this in my Discussion section!) Cheers

Ok, so I've finished all of my calculations, written most of my lab report and am finally at the discussion stage...but I can't find any typical efficiency values for concentric heat exchangers to compare my results with. HELP! If anyone knows where I can find these let me know, my report is due on Tuesday (29/11/11). Cheers!