Adjacent Words

mechanical engineering definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the branch of engineering that deals with the design and construction and operation of machinery

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: circa 1890 a branch of engineering concerned primarily with the industrial application of mechanics and with the production of tools, machinery, and their products • mechanical engineer noun

Britannica Concise

Branch of engineering concerned with the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of engines, machines, and manufacturing processes. Mechanical engineering involves application of the principles of dynamics, control, thermodynamics and heat transfer, fluid mechanics, strength of materials, materials science, electronics, and mathematics. It is concerned with machine tools, motor vehicles, textile machinery, packaging machines, printing machinery, metalworking machines, welding, air conditioning, refrigerators, agricultural machinery, and many other machines and processes essential to an industrial economy.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Engineering En`gi*neer"ing, n. Originally, the art of managing engines; in its modern and extended sense, the art and science by which the mechanical properties of matter are made useful to man in structures and machines; the occupation and work of an engineer. Note: In a comprehensive sense, engineering includes architecture as a mechanical art, in distinction from architecture as a fine art. It was formerly divided into military engineering, which is the art of designing and constructing offensive and defensive works, and civil engineering, in a broad sense, as relating to other kinds of public works, machinery, etc. Civil engineering, in modern usage, is strictly the art of planning, laying out, and constructing fixed public works, such as railroads, highways, canals, aqueducts, water works, bridges, lighthouses, docks, embankments, breakwaters, dams, tunnels, etc. Mechanical engineering relates to machinery, such as steam engines, machine tools, mill work, etc. Mining engineering deals with the excavation and working of mines, and the extraction of metals from their ores, etc. Engineering is further divided into steam engineering, gas engineering, agricultural engineering, topographical engineering, electrical engineering, etc.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Mechanical Me*chan"ic*al, a. [From Mechanic, a.] 1. Pertaining to, governed by, or in accordance with, mechanics, or the laws of motion; pertaining to the quantitative relations of force and matter, as distinguished from mental, vital, chemical, etc.; as, mechanical principles; a mechanical theory; mechanical deposits. 2. Of or pertaining to a machine or to machinery or tools; made or formed by a machine or with tools; as, mechanical precision; mechanical products. We have also divers mechanical arts. --Bacon. 3. Done as if by a machine; uninfluenced by will or emotion; proceeding automatically, or by habit, without special intention or reflection; as, mechanical singing; mechanical verses; mechanical service. 4. Made and operated by interaction of forces without a directing intelligence; as, a mechanical universe. 5. Obtained by trial, by measurements, etc.; approximate; empirical. See the 2d Note under Geometric. Mechanical effect, effective power; useful work exerted, as by a machine, in a definite time. Mechanical engineering. See the Note under Engineering. Mechanical maneuvers (Mil.), the application of mechanical appliances to the mounting, dismounting, and moving of artillery. --Farrow. Mechanical philosophy, the principles of mechanics applied to the inverstigation of physical phenomena. Mechanical powers, certain simple instruments, such as the lever and its modifications (the wheel and axle and the pulley), the inclined plane with its modifications (the screw and the wedge), which convert a small force acting through a great space into a great force acting through a small space, or vice versa, and are used separately or in combination. Mechanical solution (Math.), a solution of a problem by any art or contrivance not strictly geometrical, as by means of the ruler and compasses, or other instruments.