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An engineering design report is written to introduce and document engineering design projects. Audiences include other engineers interested in the functions and effectiveness of the design and management interested in how the design can be applied and commercialized. For example:
- Engineering students, for example, have written about the design of a temperature measurement and display system using a microcontroller and the design of a device to simulate flow through a ribbed cooling passage.
- Engineering students at Carnegie Mellon have designed a thermal-release ice maker.
The design report has many of the same parts as the engineering report presented elsewhere in this book. The key differences are of course the purpose of the design report and special sections that are peculiar to this type of report. You can get an immediate sense of those sections by looking at which shows the table of contents of the thermal-release ice maker. shows pages from the body of the report.
Body of the design report
Appendixes
Appendixes are those extra sections following the conclusion. What do you put in appendixes? Anything that does not comfortably fit in the main part of the report but cannot be left out of the report altogether. The appendix is commonly used for the following:
- Large tables of data
- Big chunks of sample code
- Fold-out maps
- Background too basic or too advanced for the body of the report
- Large illustrations that do not fit in the body of the report.
In other words, anything too large for the body of the report or too distracting and interruptive to the flow of the report is a good candidate for an appendix.
Documentation
Documentation is the system by which you indicate the sources of the information you borrow in order to write a report. Many engineers use the system created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), examples of which are shown in the figures throughout this chapter and guidelines for which are shown in . As you'll see, this book espouses a simplified version of the IEEE documentation system.
Related Information
Sample Design Report.Penn State
Design Reports. Michael Alley, Penn State
Design of a Small‐Scale Wind Turbine to Improve Drinking Water in Garacad, Somalia. Penn State
I would appreciate your thoughts, reactions, criticism regarding this chapter: your response—David McMurrey.
