I. Preface 2025#
This marks the second year of utilizing the interactive textbook in its current format. Last year, students and colleagues demonstrated significant interest in the textbook, and I am pleased with the suggestions and corrections we have received. Weekly updates, quizzes, and animations contributed to the textbook’s enhancement.
This year, we have continued to enhance interactivity while simultaneously introducing more timely and relevant applications inspired and provided by industry.
II. Preface 2024#
In front of you lies the first version of the interactive lecture notes belonging to the course “Introduction Mechanical Engineering”. The course “Introduction Mechanical Engineering” gives you as a first-year student an impression of the field of mechanical engineering. The lecture notes, lectures and guided self-study are designed to give you a first idea of which main topics are important in the field and which problems you might encounter in your professional life at a given moment. The lecture notes also give a first look at the Department: the individual chapters are reflections of the areas of expertise of the Departmental sections. The sections are the organizational units of the Department where the core of all education and research take place. Each section has its own specialty.
Mechanical engineering belongs to the so-called constructing engineering sciences. Mechanical engineers are often busy analyzing, constructing, designing, building and/or improving instruments. However it is not possible to do this at an academic level without a thorough basic knowledge of the various elements and properties of these instruments. This requires subjects such as mathematics, mechanics, materials science, control technology and fluid mechanics. Many mechanical problems cannot yet be properly analyzed with the knowledge that a starting first-year student has at his/her disposal. Problems that are dealt with in this course often come back elsewhere in the program and are then dealt with in an ever more profound way thanks to the increasingly deeper knowledge and skills of the students.
The program Mechanical Engineering is not known as simple, but we do our best to offer a curriculum that is as studyable as possible. The combination of the lectures (in which basic knowledge and basic skills are taught) and the Challenge Based Learning (the projects in which the synthesis and application of the basic knowledge and basic skills comes about) guarantees a very solid and broad education, which means that the graduated mechanical engineer has a broad range of job opportunities.
Eindhoven, August 2024
Prof. dr. ir. Patrick D. Anderson
Dean of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and responsible lecturer of the course Introduction Mechanical Engineering