General Safety Considerations – All workers, including mechanical engineers, must keep all work areas clean and free of unnecessary hazards. Debris should be cleaned up and kept clear of walkways. Hoses should be elevated above workers or covered with a crossover plank. All spills must be promptly cleaned. Emergency exits and access to fire alarms must be kept clear.

Why is safety important in mechanical engineering?

The Importance of Engineering Safety in Preventing Workplace Accidents and Injuries – Engineering safety is critical in preventing workplace accidents and injuries, which can have significant consequences for both employees and employers. Workplace accidents can result in injuries, disabilities, and even fatalities, causing immense human suffering.

What are the safety rules for mechanical engineers?

Section 2 – Plumber –

Required

Read General Safety Rules. Read Machine Shop Safety Rules. Lock Out/Tag Out Training. Confined Space Training. View Proper Lifting Powerpoint presentation. Work shoes/boots. Asbestos Awareness Training. Bloodborne Pathogens Training. Hazard Communications/Right to Know Training.

Recommended

Standard First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. Safety shoes/boots. Read Vehicle Operation Safety Rules.

Always Remember

Proper housekeeping is important. Keep all work and storage areas as clean as possible. This includes cleaning up spills. Stack materials, pipe, etc., in a safe manner out of walk and door ways. Know the application, limitations, and potential hazards of the tool used. Select the proper tool for the job. Remove adjusting keys and wrenches before operating power tools. Do not use tools with frayed cards or loose or broken switches. Keep guards in place and in working order. Have ground plugs in place. Keep alert to potential hazards in the working environment such as damp locations or the presence of highly combustible materials. Dress properly to prevent loose clothing from getting caught in moving parts. Use safety glasses, dust or face masks, or other protective clothing and equipment when necessary. Do not surprise or distract anyone using a power tool. Store combustible waste materials in a covered metal receptacle. Prior to excavation, efforts must be made to determine if there are any underground utilities in the area. This will be accomplished by calling “JULIE” and by checking in house utility prints. The walls and faces of excavations and trenches over five feet, where workers may be exposed to danger, must be guarded by a shoring system, sloping of the ground, or some other means. Appropriate trench boxes and/or shields may be used in lieu of shoring or sloping. Tools, equipment, and excavated material must be kept two feet from the lip of the trench. Daily inspections must be made of trenches and excavations. Ladders and steps must be located so as to require no more than 25 feet of lateral travel in trenches 4 feet deep or more. Any runways and sidewalks must be kept free of debris and if undermined, must be adequately shored to prevent a cave-in. Appropriate barricades and warning signs must be utilized to prevent employees and the general public from falling. Follow all safety codes. When working with any type of hazardous material, follow all cautions, and use protective equipment when necessary. Sweat soldering can be dangerous; follow all precautions. A respirator may be necessary. When working in an environment where asbestos is present, a protective suit and appropriate respirator may be required. Check with your supervisor before starting work if you find disturbed or damaged asbestos mechanical insulation. Personal protective equipment for protection against infection(s) from wastes is available and can be checked out from Stores, i.e. rubber boots, rubber gloves, protective suits, respirators.

What is factor of safety in mechanical design?

Factor of Safety Equation – In mechanical engineering, mathematically Factor of safety is the ratio of material strength and allowable stress. Factor of Safety Equation in Mechanical Engineering For example, if the required specification of a shaft is to withstand a 100 kg load. But if our shaft design is for a 200 kg load. The Shaft safety factor value is “two”.

Why is safety important in a machine?

Machines can help improve production efficiency in the workplace. However, their moving parts, sharp edges, and hot surfaces can also cause serious workplace injuries such as crushed fingers or hands, amputations, burns, or blindness. Safeguards are essential to protect workers from injury.

How do engineers ensure safety?

Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner (CMIOSH-UK) | Safety Leadership Champion | Safety Culture Transformational Leader | Fatality & Injury Risk Management Expert | HSEQ Management System Principal Auditor. – Published Dec 28, 2018 Every engineering discipline has important contributions to make to safety and health within its areas of specialization. Jobs in virtually every engineering discipline include a significant number of safety-related tasks. At the risk of slighting some disciplines, contributions of certain disciplines are noted below.

• Engineers work mainly on the preventive side of safety.
• In this role, engineers must identify hazards during design and must eliminate or reduce them.
• They also prevent unsafe behavior by designing products, workplaces, and environments so that unsafe behavior cannot or is not likely to occur.
• They also mitigate the effects of unsafe behavior through design so that the effects are controlled or of limited scope.

Civil Engineering: Civil engineers have advanced many areas of safety and health. Civil engineers pursue structural integrity of buildings, bridges, and other constructed facilities. Civil engineers seek safe and sanitary handling, storage, treatment, and disposal of wastes.

1. They study and develop controls for air and water pollution and contribute to transportation safety in design and construction of facilities for railroads, motor vehicles, ships, and aircraft.
2. Industrial Engineering: Being concerned with industrial processes and operations, industrial engineers try to fit jobs to people and make work methods and work environments safe.

Many industrial engineers receive some training in occupational safety and health, safety engineering, ergonomics, or human factors engineering. Mechanical Engineering: Mechanical engineers took the lead in establishing safety requirements for machines, boilers and pressure vessels, elevators, and other kinds of mechanized equipment and facilities.

They started safety standards for some of these systems before 1900. Electrical Engineering: Electrical engineers have contributed to safety through design of electrical safety devices, electrical interlocks, ground fault circuit interrupters, more compact electrical circuits, and other items. Today, electronics engineers and computer engineers must include software safety analysis in their designs to prevent injuries to system users.

Chemical Engineering Through the design of less hazardous processes, chemical engineers have contributed to safety. They have applied system safety techniques to process design, have helped develop requirements for less hazardous chemicals, and have developed waste reclamation processes.

Safety Engineering Safety engineering is devoted to the application of scientific and engineering principles and methods to the elimination and control of hazards. Safety engineers need to know a great deal about many different engineering fields. They specialize in recognition and control of hazards, and they work closely with other engineering and non-engineering disciplines.

Ergonomics and Human Factors Engineering Ergonomics and human factors engineering are very similar. They specialize in the application of information from the biological and behavioral sciences to the design of systems and equipment. Their goal is to improve performance, safety, and satisfaction.

• They try to improve the fit between people and equipment, environments, systems, work-places or information.
• Specialists in this field try to improve performance and safety by reducing task errors and physical stresses involved in physical activity.
• Ergonomics has a strong emphasis on physiological and biomechanical aspects whereas human factors engineering emphasizes the behavioral and cognitive aspects of performance and safety.

Fire Protection Engineering Fire protection engineering is the field of engineering concerned with safeguarding life and property against loss from fire, explosion, and related hazards. Fire protection engineers are specialists in prevention, protection, detection and alarms, and fire control and extinguishment for structures, equipment, processes, and systems.

What is the golden rule of mechanical engineering?

Engineering’s Golden Rule The Golden Rule, or the rule of reciprocity, states that one should treat others as one would wish to be treated. It is an astonishingly widespread maxim, appearing in some form in virtually every major religion and belief system.

1. As a result, the Golden Rule permeates Australian society, in our courts and parliaments, and our laws and judgments.
2. It is an integral and inalienable part of our social infrastructure.
3. Cambridge professor David Howarth’s recent book, Law as Engineering: Thinking About What Lawyers Do, considers some of the implications of this.

Howarth’s thesis is that most UK lawyers do not argue in court. Rather, on behalf of their clients, they design and implement, through contracts, laws, deeds, wills, treaties and so forth, small changes to the prevailing social infrastructure. Australian law practice seems to follow a similar pattern, and this is a good and useful thing; without these ongoing small changes to social infrastructure there would be large scale confusion, massive imposition on the court system, and general, often escalating, grumpiness.

1. Engineering serves a similar function.
2. Engineers, on behalf of their clients, design structures and systems that change the material infrastructure of society.
3. This is also a good and useful thing.
4. And, with the history of and potential for significant safety impacts resulting from these physical changes, engineers have over time developed formal design methods to ensure safe outcomes.

These methods consider not only the design at hand, but also the wider physical context into which the design will fit. This includes multi-discipline design processes, integrating civil, electrical, mechanical, chemical (and so on) engineering. It also includes consideration of what already exists, and the interfaces that will arise.

Road developments will consider their impact on the wider network, as well as nearby rail lines, bike paths, amenities, businesses, residences, utilities, the environment, and so on. Howarth’s book considers this approach to design in the framework of changing social infrastructure. He argues that lawyers, in changing the social infrastructure, ought to consider how these changes may interact with the wider social context to avoid unintended consequences.

As an example, he examines the 2009 global financial crisis in which, he argues, many small changes to the social infrastructure resulted in catastrophic negative global impacts. Following formal design processes could have, if not prevented this situation occurring, perhaps at least provided some insight into the potential for its development.

But the question arises: how should negative impacts on social infrastructure be identified? In contrast to engineering changes to material infrastructure, social infrastructure changes tend not to have immediate or obvious environmental or health and safety impacts. One option that presents itself is also apparent in good engineering design.

Engineers follow the Golden Rule. It is completely embedded in engineering practice, and is supported and reinforced by legislation and judgements. Engineers design to avoid damaging people in a physical sense. Subsequent considerations include environmental harm, economic harm, and so on.

A key aspect of this is consideration of who may be affected by infrastructure changes. Proximity is critical here, as well as any voluntary assumption of risk. That is, potential impacts should be considered for all those who may be negatively affected, and who have not elected to put themselves in that position.

This is particularly important when others (such as an engineer’s or lawyer’s client) prosper because of such developments. A recent example involving material infrastructure is the Lacrosse tower fire in Melbourne. In this case, a cigarette on a balcony ignited the building’s cladding, with the fire spreading to cladding on 11 floors in a matter of minutes.

The cladding was subsequently found to not meet relevant standards, and to be cheaper than compliant cladding. In this case, it appears a design decision was made to use the substandard cladding, presumably with the lower cost as a factor. Although it is certain that the resulting fire scenario was not anticipated as part of this decision, the question remains as to how the use of substandard materials was justified, given the increased safety risk to residents.

One wonders if the developers would have made the same choice if they were building accommodation for themselves. In a social infrastructure context, an analogy may be that of sub-prime mortgages being packaged and securitized in the United States, allowing lenders to process home loans without concern for their likelihood of repayment.

In this scenario, more consideration perhaps ought to have been given by the lawyers (and their clients) drafting these contracts as to, firstly, how they would interact with the wider context, and, secondly, whether the financial risks presented to the wider community as a result were appropriate. In many respects the potential profits are irrelevant, as they are not shared by those bearing the majority of the risk.

The complexities here are manifest. Commercial confidentiality will certainly play a role. No single rule could serve to guide choices when changing social or material infrastructure, and unforeseen, unintended consequences will always arise. But, when considering the ramifications of a decision, a good start might be: how would I feel if this happened to me? This article first appeared on,

What is safety and risk in engineering?

Risk relates to a combination of the likelihood of occurring hazards, and to the severity of their outcome or consequence. Safety in engineering design begins with identifying possible hazards that could occur, as well as the corresponding system states that could lead to an accident or incident in the designed system.

What is the common factor of safety in engineering?

Choosing design factors – Appropriate design factors are based on several considerations, such as the accuracy of predictions on the imposed loads, strength, wear estimates, and the environmental effects to which the product will be exposed in service; the consequences of engineering failure; and the cost of over-engineering the component to achieve that factor of safety,

For example, components whose failure could result in substantial financial loss, serious injury, or death may use a safety factor of four or higher (often ten). Non-critical components generally might have a design factor of two. Risk analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, and other tools are commonly used.

Design factors for specific applications are often mandated by law, policy, or industry standards. Buildings commonly use a factor of safety of 2.0 for each structural member. The value for buildings is relatively low because the loads are well understood and most structures are redundant,

Pressure vessels use 3.5 to 4.0, automobiles use 3.0, and aircraft and spacecraft use 1.2 to 4.0 depending on the application and materials. Ductile, metallic materials tend to use the lower value while brittle materials use the higher values. The field of aerospace engineering uses generally lower design factors because the costs associated with structural weight are high (i.e.

an aircraft with an overall safety factor of 5 would probably be too heavy to get off the ground). This low design factor is why aerospace parts and materials are subject to very stringent quality control and strict preventative maintenance schedules to help ensure reliability.

• A usually applied Safety Factor is 1.5, but for pressurized fuselage it is 2.0, and for main landing gear structures it is often 1.25.
• In some cases it is impractical or impossible for a part to meet the “standard” design factor.
• The penalties (mass or otherwise) for meeting the requirement would prevent the system from being viable (such as in the case of aircraft or spacecraft).

In these cases, it is sometimes determined to allow a component to meet a lower than normal safety factor, often referred to as “waiving” the requirement. Doing this often brings with it extra detailed analysis or quality control verifications to assure the part will perform as desired, as it will be loaded closer to its limits.

For loading that is cyclical, repetitive, or fluctuating, it is important to consider the possibility of metal fatigue when choosing factor of safety. A cyclic load well below a material’s yield strength can cause failure if it is repeated through enough cycles. According to Elishakoff the notion of factor of safety in engineering context was apparently first introduced in 1729 by Bernard Forest de Bélidor (1698-1761) who was a French engineer working in hydraulics, mathematics, civil, and military engineering.

The philosophical aspects of factors of safety were pursued by Doorn and Hansson

What is hazard in safety engineering?

Hazard is defined, in its most general form, as an incubating set of pre-conditions to failure. It is argued that safety, risk and reliability in technological systems can only be managed indirectly through the direct management of hazard.

What are safety moments for engineers?

A Safety Moment is a brief safety talk about a specific subject at the beginning of a meeting. Also known as safety minutes or safety chats, these talks can be done in a variety of ways, but are typically a brief (2-5 minute) discussion on a safety related topic.

table>

ul> Resources used:

UF EH&S:

ehs.ufl.edu

HWCOE Safety Office:

eng.ufl.edu/safety

University of Minnesota Joint Safety Team:

http://www.jst.umn.edu/safety-moments

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab:

1 Minute 4 Safety

Yale University Joint Safety Team:

https://jst.chem.yale.edu/resources/safety-moments

The Ohio State University:

https://chemistry.osu.edu/safety/jst/minutes

University of California, Irvine EH&S:

https://www.ehs.uci.edu/salerts/

“3 Ways to Make your Safety Moments More Personal”

Jack Gloop