THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS

News & Articles

Keeping It Real

The real-world aerodynamic performance of a vehicle can be better simulated in computer models such as SIMULIA than in wind tunnels. Image: Dassault Systèmes.Designing an automobile body is as much...

How Engineers Close Communication Gaps with Non-engineers

Entrepreneurial engineer Robert Giasolli, founder, CTO, and vice president of R@D for Cagent Vascular, has worked with in many industries to design a variety of products, including medical devices ...

Chain Reaction

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, is a win-win for people who restore classic cars and the companies that made them.Take for example the Porsche 959, the world@s fastest street ca...

Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton on Design and Innovation

Eben Upton, a Ph.D in computer science, started working on the Raspberry Pi in 2006, and the first $25 device was an instant hit on release in 2012. The board computer, which has reached 21 million...

A Green Thumb
from a Smart Phone

The joys of gardening are not for everyone. Even those with the greenest of thumbs know that raising a crop in the backyard can be a backbreaking, time-consuming, frustrating experience. There@s th...

Smart Bandage
Does It All

In another example of how technology continues to transform healthcare, engineers at Tufts University have developed @smart bandages@ that can actively monitor and deliver precisely targeted treatm...

Smarter Pest Control Moves Through the Orchards

Sensors and computer analytics have penetrated agriculture and farming, transforming the common tractor and other equipment into high-tech machines that offer precision and predictability in sowing...

New Process Embeds Coded Data on 3D-Printed Parts

Manufacturers are always looking for ways to reduce costs and stay compliant. This includes securing the chain of custody of parts and products they make and reducing counterfeit products. This is ...

How Industry 4.0 Impacts Engineering Design

Industry 4.0—the combination of digital processes such as the Internet of Things, automation, robotics, and additive manufacturing—has a disruptive impact on mechanical engineering design. Not only...

Technology Brings Clean Water and Nutrition to Central America

Guatemala is a Central American country with great opportunities to innovate. Despite natural resources such as rivers, lakes, and mountains, a large portion of the population lacks access to suffi...

Video: The Role of Materials in 3D Printing

One smart manufacturing technology has changed the course of manufacturing.

Nanosatellite Studies Space Bacteria

Elon Musk@s launch of a Tesla toward Mars was considered a stroke of public relations genius, but smart researchers pointed out the car could contaminate the planet with Earthly bacteria.A NASA sat...

Measuring Motivation

More than a glittering academic record, extensive experience, or a deep knowledge of engineering, there@s one thing that the engineering industry hopes to find in the people they hire: Motivation. ...

Top 10 Space Missions Set to Explore New Frontiers, Part 2

Part One of @Top 10 Space Missions Set to Explore New Frontiers@ looked at the first five important space missions that are underway or in their planning stages. Here are the next five.6.) Parker S...

How to Deal with Difficult People

Colleagues, coworkers, bosses and so many others can rub you the wrong way and spark feelings like anger or anxiety that can get in the way of doing your job. In the business world, they@re called ...

Beyond the Sticking Point

It was a clever solution to a modern problem. Automotive engineers at Toyota realized that their new electronic accelerator pedals didn@t provide the kind of tactile feedback that old mechanical pe...

Waste Heat Recovery Revolutionizes Diesel Engines

Back in 2016, Stephen Lynch, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State University, was hard at work on a heat exchanger, after spending a good deal of his career focusing on...

Elevating the Future

Roald Dahl@s classic children@s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was considered a work of fantasy when it was published in 1964. After all, along with nut-sorting squirrels and teleportation ...

A Robot Conductor
Takes the Stage

The baton came up gracefully for the upbeats and descended forcefully for the downbeats, while the other hand danced along in time, coaxing the musicians from one crescendo to another, the singers ...

6 Paths to the Automated Construction Site

The construction site hasn@t changed much over the years. Humans in hard hats still scurry across scaffolding, lay rebar, and pour concrete. While automation has transformed the world of manufactur...

Rekindling the Spark

Go by the headlines, and the future seems bleak for the internal combustion engine, the trusty workhorse of modern mobility. This past year has seen announcements from several major countries@Franc...

Microhammer Aids
Understanding of Brain
Trauma

With concussions continuing to dominate the sports media landscape, anything that can help to shed light on the impact of trauma to the brain is going to garner interest.Megan Valentine, associate ...

Building a Smart City

It was going to be a gleaming ghost town, shimmering amid an arid expanse of southeastern New Mexico. Energy and infrastructure consultant Marble Arch Partners proposed building The Center for Inno...

NASA Mines the Possibilities

NASA is simultaneously encouraging collegiate achievement and looking for innovative breakthroughs as the organization considers the future exploration of Mars. At least that is what Brent Chester,...

The Proving Grounds

Bruce Welty would never have entered the robotics industry if Amazon had not forced his hand.Welty and his partner had built a world-class e-commerce fulfillment facility, Quiet Logistics, by deplo...

Origami Provides Unexpected Inspiration

When you consider what could possibly inspire the design of a bulletproof shield to protect law enforcement, you probably wouldn@t choose origami first. Or second. Or even 102nd.@We were working on...

Video: Power Management Technologies

Safe, reliable, and efficient power is needed around the globe. How this is achieved is the part of the equation that requires innovation and technological development. Jeff Lowinger, Senior VP of ...

In the Hyperloop

Traffic on the way to work seems to get worse with each passing year. As you sit in the latest traffic jam, realizing you will be late for work and behind on the day, you may look longingly from yo...

Game, Set, Match: Engineering

The racket weaves upward through the air, connecting at just the right point, creating speed, spin, and an angle to put the serve just in bounds. Yet here comes a ball over the net again: speed, sp...

Hybrid Cars Compete
for Speed

When many think of a hybrid vehicle, they think about the environmental benefit, not racing. At the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, they@re thinking about winning@and learning. The Formula Hybrid com...

Mixed Reality Changes
How Engineers Work

A bridge spanning the Delaware River that connects the New Jersey Turnpike with the Pennsylvania Turnpike was abruptly shut down earlier this year when bridge inspectors on site discovered severe s...

Self-Driving Mining Trucks

Walk around a surface mine with 430-ton, 2,600-horsepower trucks hauling material, and you might hope the drivers paid attention to your whereabouts. But if the site used autonomous mining trucks, ...

Death Masks Printed in 3D

In late November, Vespers, a series of death masks designed and printed in three dimensions by Neri Oxman and her group at the MIT Media Lab, went on display at the London@s Design Museum Fear and ...

Manufacturing Cars with
Virtual Reality

Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear, Sony Playstation VR, Google Daydream View. What are the first two words you think of when you see those funky-looking headsets? First, virtual reality. Second, ...

A Feel for Feline Innovation

An inventive moment can happen anywhere. At work. Out on a walk. Even, playing with a cat. Alexis Noel had been spending time with a family feline, @Murphy,@ which led to her breakthrough.@The cat ...

Video: J.N. Reddy, ASME Medal, 2016

J.N. Reddy received the ASME Medal for lasting contributions to applied mechanics through authored textbooks and the development of shear deformation plate.

Hydrogen Breakthrough Begins

Autonomously driven vehicles and electric-powered cars flaunt technologies that are beginning to capture the imagination of the public. Tesla is the poster child for electric-powered cars, but the ...

Bomb-Sniffing Spinach

After years of talking to our plants, it looks like they@re finally able to talk back. MIT researchers recently transformed the leaves of spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and ...

Lighting Up the Statistics

E-cigarettes have become an item some turn to when they want to stop smoking traditional cigarettes, while some even take them up instead of the traditional cigarette from the very beginning. As it...

Video: System to Recycle Pollution, 2016 ISHOW India Winner

Chakr Innovation was founded by a team of engineers and other innovators who developed a system to remove soot from the exhaust of diesel engines.

If Knees Could Talk

Most bioengineer-researchers listening to sounds inside the human body are focused purely on diagnostics, but Georgia Tech Professor Omer Inan and researchers in his lab have a somewhat different m...

Inspiration from
the Basement

Mother Nature has inspired engineers in their work for years. The quickness of the cheetah, the flight of a bird, but the cricket?@I was working in bioinspired locomotion and I@ve always been inter...

From Tractor-Trailers to Self-Driving Machines

When Anthony Levandowski left Google@s self-driving car project earlier this year to launch a company that would speed up the adoption of self-driving technology, he knew he would face @a ton of ch...

Bike Helmet Design
Shifts Gears

The bike helmet has evolved over the years from an item used by serious cyclists to something you see practically everywhere. But there have been a number of complaints that have gone with this ...

7 Startups Driving
Innovation in 3D Printing

The hype of consumer 3D printing might be fizzling, but the excitement continues to build for industrial applications. It@s a market still ripe for innovation and as expected there has been a su...

From Seed to Fruit, with David Blivin

There are a lot of technology companies that owe their existence and success to David Blivin. He@s the co-founder and managing director of Cottonwood Technology Fund, based in Los Alamos. Before...

Does Competition
Drive Innovation?

What became of the Stanley Steamer, the manual typewriter, or the black-and-white television? With our endless focus on the shiny and new, it@s easy to forget that no technology lasts forever. E...

The Self-Driving Automaton

The autonomous car is easy. Yes, compared to the doltish vehicles of decades past, completely dependent, as they were, for all navigation on the people at their wheels—be they drunk, sober, passive...

Video: Greener Cars and Automotive's Future

Autonomous vehicles powered by cleaner and more efficient hybrid engines will be the future of the automotive industry says hybrid propulsion expert Dr. Hai Wang of Stanford University.

Engineering Innovations for the Golden Years

Mechanical engineering has had its hand in many inventions that have changed our lives. But now, as much as ever, it has the opportunity to improve the quality of life in its latter stages. Here we...