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WRA Project 4

Khalid Dunor

Due Date: 05/30/2020

Professor: N.Mccleese

WRA 101 Project 4

Disciplinary/Professional Literacies

The profession I have decided to do is Mechanical engineering, one of the most diverse and versatile engineering fields, mechanical engineering is the study of objects and systems in motion. As such, the field of mechanical engineering touches virtually every aspect of modern life, including the human body, a highly complex machine. It’s difficult to identify an aspect of our daily lives that hasn’t been touched by mechanical engineering. Mechanical engineers use their knowledge of materials, design, and manufacturing to advance the world around us. They design and create everything from micro-sensors, medical devices, computers, and car engines to robots, cookstoves, sports equipment, and airplanes. The breadth of mechanical engineering discipline allows students a variety of career options. Regardless of the particular path they envision for themselves, a mechanical engineering education empowers students with creative thinking skills to design an exciting product or system, analytical tools to achieve their design goals, the ability to overcome all constraints, and the teamwork needed to design, market, and produce a system. These valuable skills can be applied to launch careers in many other fields, such as medicine, law, consulting, management, banking, and finance.

Mechanical engineers utilize writing daily to communicate design ideas, create manufacturing instructions, report test results, verify project progress, create user manuals, and disseminate information. The audiences that these documents communicate to are also wide. Engineers must be able to effectively communicate complex topics and ideas to other engineers, business personnel, marketing people, and the public. Writing provides an essential means of communication. Often, mechanical engineers participate in writing Design Reviews with design teams. Design Reviews serve as a way for teams to communicate their progress and concerns about a design. Typically, a design team includes various experts. For example, a team designing a product might involve marketing and manufacturing experts, as well as industrial, mechanical, and electrical engineers. Writing a review allows all parties to input and critique ideas before production begins. For instance, electrical engineers may have specific requirements or criteria to meet before they can attach circuitry to a mechanical component. Design Reviews are a good way for everyone involved in design to formalize his/her concerns. Graphics provide illustrated information to readers. In general, graphics are designed to make it easier for readers to understand your ideas. Deciding when to insert a graphic depends on the information you need to convey. For example, as you're writing, you find yourself struggling to describe a complex concept. Fitting your description within a few paragraphs is impossible, so you decide to create a graphic. Often, graphics are useful when concepts, designs, or processes are too complex or cumbersome to describe in written or oral form. As an engineer, you'll participate in Poster Sessions during conferences and group meetings. A Poster Session allows you to display and discuss your work on a project or the results of your research. These sessions are popular in both academia and industry.

Mechanical engineers give Presentations when they work on projects and Proposals. Often, professional Presentations require you to verbally and graphically present preliminary designs to colleagues. On the other hand, if you attend technical meetings or academic conferences, you'll discover that engineers use Poster Sessions to present research and other technical information. Lab work is also an important part of every engineer's training. During a lab test or experiment, you participate in a "hands-on" experience that no textbook or lecture can provide. Writing a Lab Report requires you to reflect on these experiences. Engineers write Lab Reports to describe their work in labs. As an engineer, even if you don’t work in a lab, you might read and evaluate Lab Reports written by other engineers. Knowing what information to expect and how it should be presented can help you evaluate such reports. Lab Reports are factual presentations of test or experiment results completed in a lab or simulation. Typically, Lab Reports discuss procedures as well as describe the details of a test or experiment. As a student, you'll write Lab Reports not only for a passing grade, but to learn from the observations you make. As an engineer in industry, you'll read many Lab Reports. Whether or not you write Lab Reports in the industry depends on the company you work for and your position there. The purpose of a lab report is to present the work completed in a lab test or experiment. This information may be used in several different ways. For instance, a lab report may explain why certain materials reacted the way they did. Or, perhaps someone will use the data from the report to make a decision about which material to use in a design or project. In this case, you may have to argue, based on your results, why a particular material is better than another. When documenting your lab work, always consider how someone will use the information. As a student, it may seem as though your instructor is your audience. However, this may not always be the case. Your instructor may ask you to write for someone else, such as a peer in your class or a fellow engineer. Always check to see who your audience is. This is important because you may need to explain a lab in more or less detail, depending on your audience. For instance, your audience may already know the procedures you used; therefore, you don’t need to explain these. On the other hand, your audience may be unfamiliar with the lab, and you might need to describe the lab setup, the equipment you used, and every procedure you followed.

Just about every engineering project requires engineers to produce numerous reports. Some situations require only one report while others demand several reports to communicate work progress. The number of reports written typically depends on the type of project and who funds the project. Engineers write Progress Reports to communicate the status of their work or when they reach a milestone. Typically, consulting engineers produce these reports; however, other engineers might write to them as well. The main purpose of this document is to inform funding agencies, managers, and co-workers of problems or changes regarding a project. Often, changes can affect schedules and even budgets.

A Progress Report can be as informal as a quick e-mail or as formal as a bound report. Its format generally includes information such as project background, the work completed, the work currently being completed, and the work to be completed. It also states any problems and presents suggested solutions either already implemented or to be implemented. The details in a Progress Report depend on who the audience is. For example, a client may be more concerned about the financial status whereas a supervisor may care more about when the work will be completed. An audience analysis is necessary to determine what details to include.

Evidence in engineering consists of testing data, mathematical solutions, and publications. Citation of publication from peer-reviewed journals or technical publications are the accepted sources of written evidence. These sources spend a considerable amount of time and effort ensuring the information published meets the rigorous standards of scientific inquiry. Peer-reviewed journals send each submitted paper to a panel of experts for review. This review ensures that the conclusions drawn are driven by trends found in the data, and checks the validity of the experimental approach and calculations. Technical publications have a staff of professionals that provide this evaluation. Due to the strong mathematical nature of many reports, engineers must be familiar with using the equation editors in their word processing package. In the Mechanical Engineering program, students have a variety of writing assignments. Students must write five to seven laboratory reports for courses with a laboratory. Many of the courses have semester-long design projects that require students to document their design calculations and decisions. These design projects range from a memo type format to a long white paper style document. In the senior design project, students must write a manual for their product and submit a design report that documents all calculations, design decisions, and test data.

Communication skills are vital to success in your personal life and your engineering career. Poorly delivered messages can turn into misunderstanding, frustration, or even a disaster. By practicing communication, you will understand more of what people say. Your family, friends, and co-workers will have the confidence to come to you when they find themselves in need. When people think of mechanical engineering, they usually think about mathematics, science, technology, new products, and economic growth. Unfortunately, they do not realize the importance of writing in engineering. Mechanical engineers utilize writing daily to communicate design ideas, create manufacturing instructions, report test results, verify project progress, create user manuals, and disseminate information. The audiences that these documents communicate to are also wide. Engineers must be able to effectively communicate complex topics and ideas to other engineers, business personnel, marketing people, and the public. Writing provides an essential means of communication.

Works Cited

B. Hughey, J. Kokernak and T. Rubio, "Beyond the lab report: The place of student-designed research and visual communication in a mechanical engineering fundamentals course," 2012 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, Orlando, FL, 2012, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/IPCC.2012.6408622.

“Fast-Track Communications in Mechanical Engineering Science Guidelines for Authors.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, vol. 216, no. 3, Mar. 2002, pp. 384–384, doi:10.1243/0954406021524981

Kim, Changseb, et al. “Target Classification Layer Design via Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering, vol. 230, no. 13, Nov. 2016, pp. 1849–1861, doi:10.1177/0954407016633551.

Ma, Chao, and Erlong Kang. “Finite-Time Tracking Control for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: An Impulsive Communication Scheme.” Advances in Mechanical Engineering, Mar. 2017, doi:10.1177/1687814017694117.

Wang, Zhipeng, et al. “Decentralized Attitude Synchronization of Spacecraft Formations under Complex Communication Topology.” Advances in Mechanical Engineering, Aug. 2016, doi:10.1177/1687814016660464.

Zhang, Chunyan, et al. “Cooperative Guidance Law Considering the Randomness of the Unreliable Communication Network.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering, vol. 233, no. 9, July 2019, pp. 3313–3322, doi:10.1177/0954410018795537.

DMU Timestamp: May 11, 2020 21:16





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