Robert Balmer

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• ScD
• Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Try to analyze your design and use simple experiments to model what you cannot totally analyze. Eliminate risk and uncertainties. Make decent diagrams including dimensions for your device.

Think through your manufacturing and testing strategies. Talk to a machinist for an expert opinion of your design. Start immediately, and assign subtasks to all of the team. Enforce deadlines for all the team! Keep the device drawings up to date. Use the provided materials to make the device. Use appropriate material-joining methods such as glue, n...

In this chapter, Newton's Laws of Motion are described and developed for use both in System International units and in Engineering English units. Starting with Newton's second law, the constant gc is shown to be a consequence of what are chosen for units. Mass and weight are clearly distinguished. Free-body diagrams are introduced by force componen...

Electrochemistry is the science behind batteries and fuel cells. Those devices are needed in green solar energy or wind energy schemes that are inherently unstable or uncertain power sources. Batteries provide backup, a process known as load leveling. A Ragone chart visually shows the characteristics of electrical storage devices plotted as the log...

Chapter 1 describes the types of modern engineers to whom this book is directed with a short summary of what each discipline may be expected to do. These disciplines include biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial and manufacturing, materials, mechanical, and nuclear engineers. Engineers design and analyze, and...

Examples of previous design competitions are listed with all the steps from problem assignment to problem completion. Examples include “A Bridge to Far”, “Mars Meteorite Retriever Challenge”, and “Automatic Air Freshener”.

Civil engineering is a broad field: Structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, and water resources engineering are some of its subspecialties. Understanding structural engineering is a basic requirement of bridge design; it is system of static forces applied to a structure. The details lead to a system of linear equations that can be solved...

Define the problem as precisely as possible. Make sure that the problem addressed is the one the customer wants! Make a list of specifications for the problem dividing them into two categories of demanded (D) and wished for (W) by the customer. Make the following lists: Performance, geometry, materials, energy, time, cost, manufacture, standards, s...

Individual performance testing: Make sure your “metrics” are good predictors of success in the head-to-head matches. Typical metrics are time, speed, pushing force, or number of points scored against a stationary obstacle representing the opponent.

What enables an airplane to fly is the lift generated over its wings as it gathers speed. The physical basis for lift is the precise shape of the airfoils, which are two-dimensional representations of slices through the wings. The airflow over a wing can be modeled by the algebra of imaginary numbers and visualized in Argand planes. A simple cylind...

Solar, wind and hydropower sources are ultimately all solar. Direct solar includes photovoltaics (PV), solar thermal electric power plants, and solar thermal heat. Hydropower and wind energy are harnessed by hydroelectric dams and windmills, both of which can directly produce electricity. PV uses solar photons provided they are above the bandgap of...

Engineering design is multidimensional with many possible answers. Most projects require cooperating teams. A good designer listens to the members of his/her team. A design notebook to collect information as it is generated and store it is essential if only for possible future patent disputes. Steps in the engineering design process are: define the...

Industrial engineering refers to the production of any economic goods within an economy. Because there are so many different kinds of industries, they are divided into three different categories: primary (industries that deal with the extraction of resources directly from the Earth), secondary (industries involved in manufacturing products from the...

New materials are the basis for modern inventions and it is necessary to select the correct material for a project based on analysis of the properties of the materials under consideration. A key tool is a stress-strain diagram, which is related to Hooke's law. From it are derived properties such as elastic modulus (closely related to stiffness), el...

As an example of what bioengineers do, we present a description of impact forces on hard and soft human tissues. Collisions can kill because of the energy deposited. In an automobile accident, a speed/time graph of the event provides an estimate of the forces at play. Its effects depend on how fast one is decelerated and the impact area of the body...

Since the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing has been a series of intensive operations to make an object. Subtractive processes include turning, drilling, and milling. Additive processes include welding and continuous processes such as extrusion and pultrusion. Near net shape processes include stamping, casting, injection, blow molding, and therm...

Chemical engineers deal in atoms and molecules and use large quantities of them in kmol using Avogadro's principle. Any combustion process preserves the original number of atoms. Making a table of input gases (fuel + air usually) leads to products with the original number of atoms (not molecules). This tabular method leads an easily solved linear e...

Why do a design project? Typical faculty answers are: They are motivational tools; they apply the analytical methods taught in courses; they help to develop written and oral communication skills; and they teach teaming. In addition, they teach how to see the “big picture” and see that engineering design is at its core an unbiased and structured met...

Mechanical engineering is perhaps the broadest of all the engineering fields. We select just two areas to review. Thermal design breaks down into heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and thermodynamics while machine design focuses on mechanical behavior, machine elements, and manufacturing processes. The different mechanisms for heat transfer are therma...

Brainstorm the problem with the team. There are no “stupid” suggestions! Sketch the concept. Use research-based strategies to promote creativity: think of analogs, reverse engineer an existing similar design, and check the literature to see what exists. Use a functional decomposition for complex systems: decompose the concept into its functionaliti...

Engineering economics is about the cost of money and the economic viability of manufactured products. There are several financial terms required for a practicing engineer: Mathematical models of interest, time value of money, principal, present value, first cost, and future worth to name just a few. New investments depend on break even point (BEP),...

Nuclear fission reactions can sustain a nuclear controlled chain reaction and will produce both large quantities of thermal energy and neutrons. The key step is moderation of fast neutrons produced by fission. This occurs when neutrons collide with protons in water molecules, which provide a coolant and a moderator. An important and unfortunate con...

Energy is the capacity to do work, and it is a conserved quantity, meaning it is not lost merely converted into other forms. Familiar kinds of energy include thermal energy, potential energy, gravitational potential energy, chemical energy and electromagnetic energy. The last is a result of electron flow in wires arranged in a circuit. The ideal ga...

This chapter introduces engineering analysis, which involves the use of analytical tools. These include understanding of variables, dimensions, units, significant figures, spreadsheet analysis, and a fail-safe method of dealing with units and dimensions. Solutions to most engineering problems require precise use of variables pertinent to the proble...

Environmental engineers use fundamental modeling tools such as mass balance equations and chemical reaction equations to investigate water quality and provide pretreatment of the water supply and wastewater treatment. They also investigate air quality and develop control measures to address air pollution. Solid waste management, recycling, landfill...

Minimize the Information Content of the Design and use the principal of Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Minimize the number of parts. Minimize the number of different kinds of parts. Buying parts is preferable to manufacturing them yourself. Maintain the Independence of Functional Requirements to avoid the complications of couplings. Design for Ease...

In Chapter 9, Moore’s Law suggests that computer memories will double in capacity about every 18 months, thus producing a stunning reduction in size and in improvement in the capacity of electronic devices. Digital computing is based on binary logic (i.e., taking just two states 0 and 1, physically equivalent, to ground [0 V] and to 5 V) and three...

Engineering problems often involve designing a new product that accomplishes a task which meets customer needs or redesigning an existing product to improve its performance or market share. In most companies, design problems are normally solved by teams of trained engineers and technicians. These design teams bring varied expertise to a solution th...

Prepare to orally defend your design before a “jury.” The jury will want to know: Did the team adhere to a systematic design approach? How does the final concept work? What is the level of risk associated with this design? Do the students appear to be teaming effectively with each other? Prepare the right number of salient slides.

We will only deal with electrical circuits with direct currents, and not alternating current. Negatively charged electrons, which have a very small charge but can have appreciable potential energy, will flow from the negative terminal of an electrical circuit to the positive. (Ben Franklin assumed that current flowed in the opposite direction.) Res...

It's easy to neglect the final report. Don't! Organize of the report. Include these sections: title and authors; table of contents (with page numbers); list of individual contributions to the report; problem definition; design requirements; conceptual design; alternative concepts; evaluation of alternatives; selection of a concept; detailed design;...

Explore the concepts of modern engineering, and engage in the engineering design process through examples and projects.

This textbook has two main objectives. The first is to provide students with a clear presentation of the fundamental principles of basic and applied engineering thermodynamics. The second is to help students develop skills as engineering problem solvers by nurturing the development of their confidence with basic engineering principles through the u...

Thermoacoustic signals are generated over a large field of view by 900 ns TE₁₀ pulses with 108 MHz carrier frequency. Test specimens selectively absorb the TE₁₀ pulse energy producing rapid thermal expansions that generate ultrasonic pulses. 108 MHz irradiation provides excellent depth penetration in soft tissue, allowing bloo...

Modern Engineering Thermodynamics (plus solution manual), Elsevier Pub., 2011. This is a revision and up-grade of item 2 above.

A problem-solving approach to engineering thermodynamics, with motivational case studies, historical vignettes, and applications to modern engineering issues, accompanied by a separate thermodynamic tables booklet

Vol. 1

With origins in the decision matrices used to choose between competing alternative designs, the Ethical Decision Matrix is a practical way to ensure that a student will use a systematic approach in engineering ethical situations and at least reflect on a broad range of considerations. Alternative ethical solutions are evaluated using a subset of th...

Union College, a private liberal arts college with engineering is experimenting with a new undergraduate paradigm for integrating the arts, humanities, and sciences with modern technology and engineering in a way that will enhance student's technological literacy for the 21st century. The college agenda's "Converging Technologies" (CT) refers to ne...

This article discusses the historic relationship between the practical arts (technology) and the mental (liberal) arts, suggesting that Converging Technologies is a new higher education paradigm that integrates the arts, humanities, and sciences with modern technology. It explains that the paradigm really includes all fields in higher education fro...

An Introduction to the Science and Practice of Engineering. Elsevier Pub., first edition 2006, second edition 2010. This is a freshman level introduction to engineering textbook

It is high time to address and bridge the historical gulf between engineering and the liberal arts in higher education. Both engineering and liberal arts educators should not merely view this as an interesting sideline, but rather as an educational imperative in order to introduce students to the new interdisciplinary ideas that are changing the la...

Simultaneous energy transfer modes have been known to interact to produce unusual “coupled” effects. This coupling now has its theoretical basis in the concept of entropy production (or dissipation or irreversibility) central to nonequilibrium irreversible thermodynamics. Over the years, many examples of coupled phenomena have been identified and s...