Mechanical Design Explorer
Interactive tools for three questions mechanical and manufacturing engineers ask all the time: will this beam, shaft or column survive, will these parts assemble and which tolerance should be tightened, and where does a pump and pipe system lose pressure, cavitate or waste energy. Each chapter is a learning and screening tool, not certified design, and the example inputs are illustrative.
- Beam, shaft & column stress
- Safety factor & fatigue
- Tolerance stack-up & Cpk
- GD&T bonus tolerance (MMC / LMC)
- Pump & pipe system
- Cavitation (NPSH)
- Pump energy & VFD savings
- Thread, pipe & tolerance-grade tools
- Stress map on the deformed shape for five support cases under point and uniform loads, shear and moment diagrams, safety factor, an optional Goodman fatigue check and Euler and Johnson column buckling, with a small 1D finite-element model cross-checked against closed-form beam equations.
- Worst-case, RSS and Monte Carlo tolerance stacks with normal, uniform or triangular dimensions, Cp, Cpk, ppm, a tolerance budget solver and a ranking of the dimensions that drive the variation, plus GD&T position zones with bonus tolerance at MMC or LMC and a fastener formula (based on ASME Y14.5 concepts, not a certified interpretation).
- Darcy-Weisbach pump and pipe analysis with the operating point, the bottleneck section, an NPSH cavitation check, parallel or series pumps, tank pressures and altitude, custom fluids, and pump power and yearly energy cost with a throttle valve vs variable-speed drive comparison (system-curve analysis, not CFD).
- A basic-tools chapter adds ISO metric and UNC/UNF thread stress areas and clearance holes, steel pipe sizes, wall thickness under pressure (thin-wall and Lamé), plate stiffness against thickness and ISO 286 tolerance grades, with the same input checks.
- Every calculation is checked against textbook formulas, hand calculations or published standard tables in 700 automated tests.
