10 Essential Books for Mechanical Engineers

Behind every good engineer is a good book. Here is a list of essential books for mechanical engineers.

1. Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain. In my opinion this is the best reference book for hand calculations because it includes formulas for a wide range of engineering problems. It is accepted by most people as a good reference even in safety critical industries such as nuclear.

2. Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook. This book has a bit of everything in it and I usually look at this one before anything else. It just scratches the surface of most subjects and is ideal to use as a quick 'look see'. I take mine everywhere with me except on holiday.

3. Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design. Another widely used and popular book. It has quite a lot of worked examples in it and covers them in some depth. It's a bit too big to carry around but definitely worth the money.


Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design (8th Edition in SI Units)

4. Building Better Products with Finite Element Analysis. This is a rare example of an FEA book that is practical and is perfect for design engineers who would like learn more about finite element analysis.

5. Steel Designers' Manual. An excellent reference for the big stuff such as structural steel.

6. Machinery's Handbook. This is the bible of mechanical engineering books. It's got just about everything to do with machinery in it. I find it particularly useful for thread details. It's well worth the investment.

7. Peterson's Stress Concentration Factors. If you need to do some hand calculations to find peak stress for fatigue studies then this book is a must have. I rarely use it myself because I prefer FEA.

8. Atlas of Stress-Strain Curves. If you want to do some non-linear FEA work on metals this book has hundreds of stress-strain curves in it.

Atlas of Stress-Strain Curves (#06825G)

9. Mechanics of Engineering Materials. This is another one with lots of worked examples in it. I've had the first edition from university and still use it occasionally.

10. Tables, Data and Formulae for Engineers and Mathematicians. This book is small enough to carry around and is cheap as chips. If I lost it I'd buy another.