What do mechanical engineers do?

Question

What do mechanical engineers do?

Answer 1

As a person who has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering, our specialization can be devided in to 3 major categories.

1. Advance Mathematics and General Industrial Science
2. Machine Design and Shop Practice
3. Power plant and Industrial Engineering

What we do is primarily deal with any problem that involves movement or motion in terms of construction and design.

Good examples of these are:

1. Design Pumps to move water from ground level to a desired height.

2. Designing ventilation systems to condition Air from 1 point to the another.

3. Calculating elevator shafts and the counter weight for vertical transportation

4. Designing Fire protection systems such as the sprinkler system of a building

5. We design new and more efficient Internal combustion engines

6. We are able to operate and manage Powerplants and Industrial factories

There are alot more but the examples above are just the basic more noticable work of a Mechanical Engineer.

Answer 2

Probably not. I'm a chemistry major and have a brother who is an engineering major. My degree has little to nothing to do with engineering and depending on the classes you take on the chemistry side you will not even get into the instruments used for chemistry in some cases. So really you probably need to head to a different school because majoring in chemistry probably will not do you much good for chemical engineering.

Answer 3

Mechanical engineers build weapons.

Civil engineers build targets.

Mechanical engineers design, build, develop, create all sorts of stuff. I make airplanes. At my company, we have mechanical engineers in just about every facet - structures, flight control systems, bleed air, air conditioning, ergonomics, landing gear, electronics (especially in the autopilot design), aerodynamics, and sales (though airplane sales isn't a typical ME job).

The advantage of Mech Eng is that it's general enough that you can go just about any way your heart desires and still be able to learn a specialty.

Civil engineers build targets.

Answer 4

I like the Ansys answer

OK first off this is not an exhaustive list by all means.

Mechanical engineers (Mece) are kind of a Jack of all trades kind of Engineer. Mece's typically deal with things that move (pumps planes, cars) thermodynamic systems (engines, power plants, Heating and Ventilating), and stress analysis (ANSYS, Finite element analysis, Nodal Analysis, Vessel analysis)

Another thing that all engineers also do is economic analysis and project management.

What a Mece will do depends a lot on what they specialized in in school and what they are interested in.

Answer 5

A mechanical engineer at least in Mexico,
Designs machines and tools
Designs manufacturing procesess
Develope industrial projects.
research about materials and structures-

Answer 6

Computerized Architectural Designs at the high-end. Repairs with a tool kit at the low-end.

Answer 7

They sit in their lab all night long pissed off because ANSYS keeps saying "unconverged solution" and they answer questions on yahoo answers while their simulations are running (like crap).

To the last guy who answered...
Architectural drawings...nope.
Do you mean "Computer Aided Design?"
Like CAD? That's definitely not "high end"

Answer 8

all of the preceeding are good answers - the ME does many things in many arenas -- it's the best degree for the technical generalist

Answer 9

I like to drink beer and watch sports.