Technical Reports. MCG 4340 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Manual

Technical Reports MCG 4340 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Manual Objective: The objective of this document is to provide guidelines for writing engineering reports in general and the MCG 4340 formal laboratory reports in particular. Preamble: One of the most common tasks in the engineering profession is the writing of technical reports. Although a slick report cannot conceal a shallow or erroneous content, a poorly organized or presented report will diminish the importance and credibility of the presented material. Technical reports follow well-established general formats, with specific formats often prescribed by the organization preparing or receiving the report. Format: The formal report to be submitted in MCG 4340 must be typed on one side of standard 216 279 mm (8 1 11in) white paper using an easily legible 12 2 point serif font (Times Roman or similar). Lines must be 1 1 or double spaced. The 2 text, equations, tables etc. should be typed using a word processor or typesetting software. Drawings and graphs should be made using graphics software and scans and photographs should be of good quality. Page margins must be 25.4 mm (1 in) on the top, bottom and right hand side and 38.1 mm (1 1 in) on the left to allow for 2 binding. The use of larger fonts, bold-facing, italicizing, and underlining in headings, figure and table captions and other parts of the report must be consistent and create a balanced appearance of each page. The report must include a cover sheet with the title etc. and a back cover, both printed on thicker paper. The report should be bound using spiral binding (not stapled or presented in a folder). The report may be in English or French. Organization: The report should be organized in a standard manner, with the different items appearing in a conventional order. It should be divided in chapters, sections and sub-sections, numbered in a consistent manner. For example, chapters would be numbered as 1., 2., 3 etc.; sections within Chapter 1 would be numbered as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc.; and subsections within Section 1.1 would be numbered as 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3 etc. There should be no single subdivisions. For example, Section 1.1 should not Prepared by S. Tavoularis for the Winter 2013 class by adapting and synthesizing previous versions by W. Hallett and the author. 1

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 2 have a Subsection 1.1.1, unless followed by Subsection 1.1.2; in such case, all material should be presented under the heading of Section 1.1, without subdivision. For brief reports, such as Laboratory Reports, one may refer to chapters as sections, but the numbering scheme should be retained as previously described. The standard items of an Engineering Report, to be organized in the presented order, are as follows. Title Page. This is the cover page of the report and should contain the title of the report, a report number, if applicable, the authors and their affiliations, and the date of submission. In the particular case of the MCG 4340 reports, also include the code and name of the course, your name and student number, the names of the other group names, the Department and University names, the date as well as the names of the course instructor and laboratory assistant to whom the report is submitted. The title page is not numbered and not included in the table of contents. The material on the cover should be arranged neatly and legibly. Abstract. This should be on a separate page, immediately following the title page. It is a concise summary of the report, limited to one or two paragraphs (200 to 300 words). The abstract should present in a condensed form all the important information contained in the report, so that a busy reader who only reads the abstract can get a fair idea of the report s content and conclusions. Items to include are the objective of the report, apparatus and procedures used, major results and conclusions. The language of the abstract is formal and to the point and should stick to the facts without decorations and unnecessary clutter. Write the abstract after you complete the report and edit it several time to ensure that it is clear and that each word carries its weight. Look for words and sentences which are unnecessary and remove them; rephrase text to make it more straightforward; ensure that the abstract does not contain material whose definition or meaning must be found elsewhere (e.g., references, acronyms or undefined symbols) Acknowledgements. This gives due credit to other individuals or organizations for contributions to the work, assistance with specific tasks, and financial or moral support. It is not usually part of a lab report. Table of Contents. This is a list of the names and page numbers of all items in the report. In case of multiple-level subdivisions (i.e., chapters, sections, subsections etc.), only the first few levels need to be listed. List of Tables. This is a list of all captions and page numbers of all formal tables in the report, which must be numbered either sequentially in the entire report or sequentially in each chapter. List of Figures. This is a list of captions and page numbers of all illustrations, including drawings, graphs, photographs, scanned images etc., which must be numbered either sequentially in the entire report or sequentially in each chapter.

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 3 Nomenclature. Alternately referred to as List of Symbols, the Nomenclature defines all mathematical symbols that appear in the report, including its illustrations and appendices. Each symbol must also be defined in the text where it is first introduced. In the Nomenclature, symbols should be listed in the following order and under separate headings: - Latin letters (no need for a heading; listed in alphabetical order, with capital letters defined before the corresponding lower case ones) - Greek letters (also in alphabetical order and with capitals first) - other symbols (e.g.,, Hebrew letters,...) - subscripts and superscripts (in alphabetical order) - other notation (e.g., overbars). Units (in square brackets) must be given for all dimensional variables; these units will normally be SI unless there is some particular reason for using English units. In addition to the Nomenclature, a Glossary may be included in the report, in which acronyms or specialized terms which are not understood commonly are defined. Main body of the report (not actually mentioned by this or other name), which comprises several chapters, typically the following: 1. Introduction. This is Chapter 1. Among the items to be included in an Introduction are: - motivation; you may include some historical background (not a detailed literature review), the reasons for doing the work and/or writing the report, comments on the significance and applications of the topic - subject and scope of the work; specify the subject the report deals with as well as the breadth and imposed limits of the investigation - objective(s) of the work; this may include general and specific objectives - expected significance of the results; explain how this work may contribute to knowledge and advance the field (for research projects) - plan of the report; outline very briefly the contents of the following chapters. 2. Literature Review. This is necessary for research projects; whether or not to include a literature review in a laboratory report would depend on the topic and depth of investigation. In the review identify the main sources of previous work on the topic; use previous literature, or the absence of it, to justify the need for this work and the significance of its objectives. 3. Theoretical Background. Outline background information necessary to understand the work, including theory needed to analyze and interpret the results later on. Avoid explaining material which is common knowledge or unnecessary for the specific purposes of this report. Always document your material by citing appropriate references, unless it contains widely accepted information which can be traced in multiple standard sources (e.g., the perfect gas law) or you are the sole author of this information (e.g., an original analysis based on a first principle) Do not copy verbatim from your sources, but present the information

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 4 in your own words. Identify all assumptions underlying some relationship or made during a derivation and, if necessary, include any non-trivial derivation steps. If you use an available computer program or develop one yourself, explain its basic structure (program listings are usually included in an appendix). 4. Experimental Apparatus, Instrumentation and Procedures. Describe in sufficient detail the experimental facilities and instrumentation used. Outline all non-trivial steps of the procedures used for the operation of the apparatus and the use of the instrumentation for collecting measurements. Be as specific as possible, identifying the manufacturer and model number of each piece of apparatus used. The apparatus and procedures should be explained in such detail that any qualified peer should, in principle, be able to repeat the experiment based solely on your instructions. If you have deviated from procedures set in this manual, explain the reasons and the changes. An important part of this chapter (possibly supplemented with additional details in an appendix) is the Uncertainty Analysis. Using standard engineering procedures, estimate the uncertainty of all measured, computed or derived properties. Determine uncertainty limits, which may be displayed in tables or graphs, together with the results. Explain your confidence level in these uncertainty estimates and identify possibly existing but unaccounted for sources of error. 5. Results. Provide clearly, completely and formally all experimental results, using tables and graphs as necessary. Tables should have concise and clear headings of rows and/or columns and units should be provided (usually in a separate row or column). Graphs should also have axis names and units. Numerical values should be rounded off consistently, in accordance with appropriate rules. Whenever possible, define appropriate scales and present the results in dimensionless form, making sure that all scale values are given so that the original values can be recovered, if required. Measured values or values derived following simple calculations should be listed in this chapter, however, results obtained from the measurements by the use of extensive application of theoretical expressions or otherwise elaborate analysis should be provided in the next chapter. All tables and figures must be cited in the text and have proper captions and numbers. Any comparisons of values should be preferably quantitative (e.g., by giving ratios of values or differences as percentages) rather than qualitative. In the case of MCG 4340 reports, make sure to answer any questions in the lab manual. 6. Analysis and Discussion of the Results. In this chapter, you apply theoretical relationships to process raw experimental data and compute more complex properties, which may be combinations of several measured or otherwise available values. Any observations made, and generalized if possible, should be expressed in the form of concise, unambiguous and clear conclusions. The sequence of arguments that lead to each conclusion must be explained without gaps in the logic. Any problems faced during the analysis, such as the use of additional information to replace missing or unreliable data or the introduction

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 5 of drastic assumptions, should be presented and discussed. Evaluate the results and the conclusions, from the viewpoints of self-consistency and compatibility with physical principles and common sense. If discepancies are identified, explain the possible reasons, as much as possible using sound logic and avoiding unfounded speculations or evasive statements (e.g., the reasons for... are unknown). If relevant results are available in the literature, compare them to yours. Discuss error sources and their possible effects on the results. Appraise the success of the experiment and the degree by which the objectives of the work have been met. 7. Conclusions and Recommendations. In a first section, list the main conclusions that were reached in the report. Each conclusion should be presented in a brief, self-contained and separate sentence; you may wish to use bullets or a numbered list. Do not summarize the whole report - that is what the abstract is for. All conclusions presented in this chapter must have already been presented and fully justified in earlier chapters; no new results or conclusions should be presented at the end of the report. In a second section, list your recommendations for additional work, improvements of the procedures and any other suggestions that you may have. Estimate the resources, time, level of knowledge and expertise and budget required for the implementation of your recommendations. List of References. In this list, include all references cited in the report and onlythose. Workswhichyouthinkareusefulbuthavenotactuallybeencitedin the text should be listed in a separate section, to be called Bibliography. For details on citing and listing references, see a following section in this manual. Appendices. Appendices contain details not important enough or too long to be included in the main report, but useful for someone following up on the work described in the report. Material to be included in separate appendices includes details of lengthy derivations of equations, details of numerical methods, computer program listings, detailed uncertainty analyses, tabulations of data, detailed drawings of apparatus, and sample calculations. Tables, programs and listings can formatted to save space: unlike the main report, they may be single spaced with a font as small as 10 pt. Each appendix should be identified by a letter (A, B, etc.) and a title, and should be listed in the Table of Contents. All appendices should be cited in the main report. Equations, figures and tables in each appendix should be numbered separately (e.g., equation B1, Figure C3). Page numbering: All pages, excluding the title page, should be numbered. All pages before the main body are numbered in lower case Roman numerals (i.e., i, ii, iii etc.), starting with the Abstract as page i. Starting with the first page of the main body of the report, all pages are numbered in Arabic numerals (i.e., 1, 2, 3 etc.). Units: Canada is officially committed to the SI system of units and engineering results should be presented in SI units. There are a few exceptions to this, such as

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 6 inch system screw threads. If values in units other than SI ones must be cited for some particular reason, they should be in parentheses following the SI values. For example, if for clarity it is necessary to specify a pressure in mmhg, present it as 1.30 kpa (9.75 mmhg). Note that the numbers of significant figures of values given in two units must be the same. For example, if something is roughly 1 ft long, it should be specified as 0.3 m and not 0.3048 m. Equations: Equations should be prepared using an equation editor in a word processor. Isolated symbols or very simple equations can be typed as text, but their font and appearance (italicized characters) should be identical to the ones used by the equation editor. It is not acceptable to write an equation in spreadsheet format, as for example y = 3*xˆ2 instead of y = 3x 2. Each equation should normally be written on a separate line and be numbered so that it may be cross-referenced in the text or figure captions. Very short equations which are never cross-referenced may be written as in-line equations. Equations may simply be numbered sequentially as 1, 2, 3 etc. in the entire report, or alternatively by the chapter they belong to, as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc.. All symbols used in an equation must be defined in the text the first time they appear and listed in the Nomenclature. An equation is part of a sentence, and the text preceding and following the equation should be punctuated exactly as it would be if one were reading the equation or writing it in words. Example: The temporal variation of the displacement x of a piston is given by the equation x(t) = Asin(2πft), (1) where t is time, A is the amplitude of the motion, and f is the frequency. Equation (1) can be used for... Note: do not allow your wordprocessor to capitalize where. References: The purpose of references is to allow the reader to identify the original source of all important information in the report. Any material reproduced from another work, whether it be text, data, graphs or diagrams, must be properly attributed to its source. For text, this means putting the material in quotation marks and giving a reference for it; for other material, this means writing (Reproduced from...) in the caption. Reproduction of material from other persons works without giving credit is plagiarism, and can lead to action for academic fraud. In technical reports, articles, books and other written resources in science and engineering, the following two common systems are used for citing references to published material. Thenumbersystem, bywhichtheworkiscitedinthetextbyinsertinganumber in square brackets (e.g.., [4]). The numbers are assigned in the order in which the works are first cited, and the corresponding complete references are listed in numerical order in the list of references at the end of the report. If a work is cited more than once, the same number is used for each citation. Citations take up less space in the text with this system, but the disadvantage is that, if the manuscript were revised and additional references were cited, any of the old references that follow new ones would have to be re-numbered.

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 7 The author/date system, by which the work is cited in the text by the last name(s) of author(s) and the year of publication in parentheses (e.g., Smith (2005)); if there are two coauthors, both last names should be mentioned (e.g., Smith and Smythe (2005)); if there are more than two authors, only the first author s name should be mentioned, followed by et al. (e.g., Smith et al. (2005)). The works cited should be listed in alphabetical order by the last name of the first author in the list of references. If two or more references have identical authors and years, identify them as Smith (2005a), Smith (2005b) etc. In either case all references are listed together in the List of References at the end of the report. References should not be placed in footnotes (this is not a common format for citations in engineering, although it is the standard in the humanities). If in doubt about reference formats, follow the format used in a reputable engineering research journal. In the list of references, each work is listed with the names of all authors (last names and initials only - do not list first names), the title, the year published, and all other information that would be required by the reader to trace this reference in the library. For journal papers, the journal name, volume number, and page numbers must appear; for conference papers, the name and location of the conference and the page numbers in the proceedings; for books and reports, the publisher and city. Web material must be referenced with the URL and the date posted. Avoid heavy use of web references, because web sites are frequently changed and the material cited may become unavailable. The following are typical formats for references. To a journal paper: Smith, A., Jones, B., and Bloggs, W. (1993), High temperature decomposition of lab reports, Can. J. Eng., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 23-34. (Note that there are standard abbreviations for journal titles). To a conference paper: Blow, J., and Snow, M. (1996), Toxic emissions from incineration of lab reports, Proc. 23rd Conference on Incineration, Toronto, June 3-5, 1996, pp. 1-24. To a book, thesis or technical report: Étudiante, A., and Schueler, M. (2001), Handbook of Lab Report Recycling, University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa, Canada. If you want to refer to a specific page in the book, do it in the citation in the text: Smith [25, p. 345] shows that... or Smith (1983, p. 345) shows that.... If the book has no author, for example a users manual for a piece of equipment, list the company name as the author. To verbal information: Chrétien, J. (2002), personal communication. Figures: All figures including drawings, graphs, photographs and scanned images mustbeclearlylegible. Letteringshouldbeequivalenttoatleast10pointsinsize, and line widths must be sufficient to reproduce well (0.5 mm is recommended). All figures must be cited in the text. Figures may be placed in the text near the paragraph where they are cited, or they may be grouped at the end of a section. Each figure should

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 8 have a caption which gives sufficient information that it can be understood without referring to the main text. Figures should be numbered in each section separately, so that Fig. 2.1, 2.2, etc. appear in Chapter 2 of the report. Graphs: The results of experiments or calculations are usually presented as graphs; however, when actual values are important, the same results may be presented in tables instead of graphs. For the laboratory reports, it is recommended to present the processed results in graphs in the main report, and as tables of raw data in an Appendix. Graphs should conform to the following standards. Individual values of measurements must be plotted as points. Each series of points should have a distinct symbol, such as,,, etc.; the symbols must be defined in a legend or in the figure caption. When multiple series are shown on the same graph, ensure that all values are visible. In some cases, it would be preferable to show different series in separate or vertically staggered plots. Repeated measurements may all be shown if there is no clutter in the graph; alternatively, you may show the mean values and uncertainty bars. In general, experimental points should not be joined by line sections or curves, except when it becomes necessary to connect widely scattered data. When seeing a line, a reader may assume that the line has been fitted to the data by some statistical means, or represents an equation that describes the real behaviour of the system. If there is good cause to believe that a theoretical equation represents the behaviour of the system under measurement, then this equation can be plotted (as a continuous line, not by points) together with the experimental data. In some cases, such equations have numerical coefficients, which do not have fixed values but may be adjusted so that the equation fits as best as possible to the data. This means that the mean square difference between the measured values and the corresponding values predicted by the equation must be minimized. Spreadsheets (e.g., Excel) and scientific packages (e.g., MATLAB) have curve-fitting capabilities. The fitting of a theoretical expression to data must be distinguished from purely empirical curve fitting, for example the fitting of a polynomial, whose objective is to represent in a condensed form the data variation and the trends without assigning any physical significance to these. Different curves and lines should be drawn with different styles, e.g., solid, dashed, broken, etc..the line thickness should be sufficient for visibility but not too thick to overwhelm the plot. The use of coloured lines may lead to confusion when the graph is printed by a black-and-white printer. If you use colour, test the appearance of the different colours in grey tone. All line symbols must be defined in the legend or the figure caption. All axes must be clearly labelled with the variable plotted and its units, e.g., Pressure [kpa].

MCG 4340 Lab Manual Technical Reports - p. 9 Sometimes spreadsheets have default settings that produce plots in grey background and with grid lines. Avoid either of these distractions to present simple, clean plots, but use sufficient numbers of ticks on both axes. Functions of two independent variables may be plotted either as contour plots or three-dimensional plots. When you use these types of plots, or other more sophisticated formats, make sure that you understand the protting procedures and that your plots are clearly understandable by the reader. Again, the use of colours should not lead to ambiguous plots when printed in grey tones. Logarithmic scales may be used when the data have a greater range than can be shown conveniently on a linear scale. If the largest value plotted is more than 10 times the smallest, a log scale will often make the lower values more visible. Log scales are also used when one expects data to follow a power law. In logarithmic coordinates, the expression y = ax n appears as a straight line with intercept at log a and slope n. Similarly, in semi-logarithmic coordinates an exponential expression y = e ax appears as a straight line with slope a. Log scales do not have a zero, because log(0) is undefined. Note that in log scales it is the variable itself, and not its logarithm, that appears on the scale. Make sure thatyouunderstand howtheaxesarescaled and thatyou can read intermediate values accurately.