Engineers

Engineers use their knowledge of science, mathematics, and appropriate experience to find suitable solutions to a problem. Engineering is considered a branch of applied mathematics and science. Creating an appropriate mathematical model of a problem allows them to analyze it (sometimes definitively), and to test potential solutions. Usually multiple reasonable solutions exist, so engineers must evaluate the different design choices on their merits and choose the solution that best meets their requirements. Engineers typically attempt to predict how well their designs will perform to their specifications prior to full-scale production. They use, among other things: prototypes, scale models, simulations, destructive tests, nondestructive tests, and stress tests. Testing ensures that products will perform as expected. Engineers as professionals take seriously their responsibility to produce designs that will perform as expected and will not cause unintended harm to the public at large. Engineers typically include a factor of safety in their designs to reduce the risk of unexpected failure. However, the greater the safety factor, the less efficient the design may be. The study of failed products is known as forensic engineering, and can help the product designer in evaluating his or her design in the light of real conditions. The discipline is of greatest value after disasters, such as bridge collapses, when careful analysis is needed to establish the cause or causes of the failure.

Reliability

Reliability is a basic requirement of any instrument, plant or machine. The most ingenious machine is nothing but useless unless it is reliable. At present the main defect in any machine is the different service life of its parts. The first to break down are parts with friction, the most numerous in any machine. Until quite recently scientists differed in their explanations of why parts subject to friction break.

At present scientists at the Blagonravov Institute for the study of machines are engaged in research into friction and wear-and-tear resistance. The results of their comprehensive research will extend the useful life of units with friction by thirty to fifty percent as compared with what we have now. Sufficient reliability and long service life of highly complicated automatic complexes, spaceships and assembly lines can be ensured by the high quality of their components, their accurate assembly and continuous checking while in operation, as well as by detecting faults as soon as they appear. This means that instruments are necessary for checking metal billets; all kinds of test installations and multiple switching control devices by which temperature, pressure and density in any part of a system may be inspected a number of times over a period of only one second. We need diagnostic systems and many different types of flow detections and sensors because, as is known, reliability is the key which opens the way to large-scale automation.

Four Industrial Revolutions

The history of mechanical engineering goes back to the time when the man first tried to make machines. We can call the earlier rollers, levers and pulleys as examples of the work of mechanical engineering. Mechanical engineering, as we understand it today, starts from the first Industrial Revolution. People have labeled as „revolution“ three episodes in the industrial history of the world and now we are entering the fourth.

The first industrial revolution took place in England between 1760 abd 1840. Metal became the main material of the engineer instead of wood, and steam gave man great reserves of power. This power could drive not only railway engines and ships but also the machines which built them.

In the second revolution, from 1880 to 1920, electricity was the technical driving force. It provided power for factories that was easier and cheaper to control than steam. It was marked also by the growing importance of science-based industries such as chemicals and electrical goods, and the use of scientifically-designed production methods such as semi-automated assembly lines.

The third industrial revolution coincided with the advent of automation – in its inflexible form. In this revolution, the main features were advances in the control of manufacturing processes so that things could be made more cheaply, with greater precision and with fewer people. And this change, which occured around the middle of this century, also featured a new machine that was to greatly influence the world, the electronic computer.

The fourth industrial revolution will be characterized by automated machines that are versative and programmable and can make different things according to different sets of computer instructions. It will be characterized by flexible, automated machinery, the most interesting example of which are robots.