Mechanical Design

mailto:f.l.m.delbressine@tue.nl

Introductory book

A very good introductory book about Mechanical Design for Industrial Designers is:

It can be bought at Lucid or lent from the university library.

Main rules from this book:

  1. Create designs that are explicitly simple - keep complexity intrinsic

  2. Keep the functions of a design independent from one another

  3. Use exact constraint when designing structures and mechanisms. Never overconstrain a design!

  4. Plan the load path in parts, structures and assemblies.
  5. Triangulate parts and structures to make them stiffer

  6. Avoid bending stresses. Prefer tension and compression.
  7. Improve designs with self-help.

  8. Manage friction in mechanisms. Use friction deliberately or avoid it.

Mechanical Design presentation

The presentations I give using this book can be found here: Elements.pdf and BasicEnergyElements.pdf .

Other good books are:

Rosielle's lecture notes and Koster's book are about the principles of Mechanical Design. Both are very good but in Dutch. The first one is much cheaper.

Dubbel is the "bible" of Mechanical Design, Engineering and Manufacturing. It is called a pocket book but it is so complete it does not fit in your pocket anymore.

The book of Leijendeckers is a small book covering a lot of things of engineering in general not just Mechanical Engineering.

The book of Nigel Cross covers the more general topics about design methodologies. As an Industrial Designer you will recognize a lot of these methodologies.


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