Engineering Standards 101

Mary C. Emplaincourt, Mississippi State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Richard E. Forbes, Mississippi State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering

6/08/2008
(Original Publish Date: 5/1/2004)

Standards exist which are frequently encountered in the practice of engineering. Many engineers are employed full time in a job where each manufactured item produced by their company conforms to the requirements of a published standard (e.g., boilers/ASME). Other engineers rarely require knowledge of or use standards in their daily work. The purpose of this paper is to introduce undergraduate students to the world of Standards as they apply to the practice of engineering. The paper should be useful in classes such as Introduction to Mechanical (or other) Engineering or in Seminar classes in the early phases of the undergraduate engineering curriculum.