Mechanical design + fluids + structures¶

Open Frontier

What you will develop¶

Turn loads and flows into safe geometry; reason about stress, fatigue, shells, fluids, pumps, pressure systems and mass-efficient structures.

Before you begin¶

Recorded prerequisites:

• Mathematical reasoning and proof
• ODEs + dynamical systems

Study and practice¶

Progress by the work you can do, not by a fixed calendar.

Practice sequence 27¶

Spine: TU Delft Open Textbook + OpenStax UP1

Reading: Stress/strain, elasticity, loads; TU Delft Module 1 + OpenStax Ch. 12

Know: Translate loads into stress/strain/deflection; distinguish material stiffness, geometry and safety factor.

Reconstruct: Derive axial stress/strain and beam-bending scaling from force/moment balance.

Do: Design a lightweight bracket/beam for stiffness and strength; validate with simple FEA or analytical comparison.

Defend: Why can making a part stronger make a system worse?

Gate: Pass: load cases, failure modes, safety factor and mass tradeoff are explicit.

Source: source

Practice sequence 28¶

Spine: TU Delft

Reading: Modules 3-4 aerospace structures, shells, loads and stresses

Know: Understand thin-walled structures, buckling intuition, load paths and mass-efficient shell/stiffener concepts.

Reconstruct: Derive thin-wall pressure-vessel hoop stress and Euler-buckling scaling.

Do: Concept design a rotating-habitat pressure shell or spacecraft tank with mass/buckling/load-path analysis.

Defend: When does buckling, not material yield, become the governing failure?

Gate: Pass: identify governing mode before adding material.

Source: source

Practice sequence 29¶

Spine: OpenStax UP1

Reading: Ch. 14 Fluid Mechanics: pressure, continuity, Bernoulli, viscosity/turbulence

Know: Build control-volume fluid models; relate pressure, velocity, elevation, losses and regime.

Reconstruct: Derive continuity and Bernoulli for ideal steady flow; derive Reynolds-number dimensions.

Do: Size a life-support coolant/air loop including pipe losses and pump requirement.

Defend: Why can Bernoulli be exactly derived yet badly misapplied?

Gate: Pass: every Bernoulli use states assumptions and loss terms.

Source: source

Practice sequence 30¶

Spine: TU Delft + fluid reference

Reading: Fatigue, durability, joining, composites, material/structure selection

Know: Reason about cyclic loads, damage accumulation, joints, composites and inspectability/repair.

Reconstruct: Derive stress-concentration/fatigue-life scaling qualitatively and composite rule-of-mixtures bounds.

Do: Redesign the Week-28 structure for manufacturability, inspection and fatigue rather than one-shot static strength.

Defend: What is the difference between damage tolerance and infinite-life design?

Gate: Pass: design includes inspection interval and graceful-failure strategy.

Source: source

Practice sequence 31¶

Spine: Integrated design studio

Reading: Shigley/White/TU Delft references

Know: Integrate structures, fluids, thermal loads, mechanisms, tolerances and controls into a real assembly.

Reconstruct: Regenerate dimensional-analysis/Buckingham-Pi workflow and one tolerance-stack relation.

Do: Design a small pump/valve/structure or exoskeleton-joint subsystem; include CAD, load cases, fluid/thermal/tolerance budgets.

Defend: Which uncertainty dominates: loads, material, manufacturing, environment or model form?

Gate: Module defense: design review with quantified margins and test plan.

Source: source

Exit gate¶

Closed-book: 150 min: stress/strain, beams/shells/buckling, pressure vessel, fluid control volume, fatigue/tolerances.

Novel problem: Design a mass-constrained structure/flow subsystem for a spacecraft, robot, habitat or medical device.

Artifact: CAD/analytical/FEA or CFD-lite comparison plus test plan.

Defend: Defend governing failure mode, load path, fluid assumptions, fatigue/inspection and tolerances.

Pass criterion: Pass if design fails first where predicted or discrepancies are explained.

Transfer problems¶

Try these before consulting solutions or asking for the complete answer.

1. Stress: Find governing stress in a simple bracket under combined load.

2. Buckling: Compare yield and Euler-buckling limits as geometry changes.

3. Pressure: Size a thin-wall pressure vessel and discuss where thin-wall assumptions break.

4. Beam: Minimize beam mass under stiffness constraint using scaling.

5. Fluid: Size pipe/pump for a target flow with pressure losses.

6. Reynolds: Determine flow regime and consequences for scaling/test similarity.

7. Fatigue: Estimate life sensitivity to stress amplitude and surface/notch effect.

8. Composite: Bound composite stiffness using constituent rule-of-mixtures assumptions.

9. Tolerance: Build a worst-case and statistical tolerance stack for an assembly.

10. Integrated: Design a habitat/robot subsystem where structure, fluid, thermal and actuator constraints conflict.

Textbooks¶

See the five-book resource page.

Reading options¶

Assigned readings, where available, appear in the practice sequence above. These additional recommendations are not all required reading.

• Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design

Continue¶

Connections above reflect recorded prerequisites, not a compulsory calendar.

Integrated practice | Choose a study route