USMA Library Homepage: Civil & Mechanical Engineering: ME 404 & 496

Overview

Welcome to the research guide for ME 404 & 496 - the Mechanical Engineering Capstone courses! Below you'll find advice and links to help you find great sources of information for your capstone project research, including links to our various search tools for books and ebooks, suggestions for the best databases to use for capstone research, and links to DoD and Federal Government agencies which can provide information and data useful to your project.

Databases for In-Depth Research Articles

Once you've acquired background information on your topic - important names, dates, events - it's time to turn to subject-specific databases in order to find detailed scholarly articles that provide a more in-depth and focused analysis for your capstone project. Below are links to databases that include articles which address a variety of Mechanical Engineering topics that relate to capstone projects.

ASCE Research Library This link opens in a new window
Although predominantly covering Civil Engineering topics, there is enough overlap with Mechanical Engineering topics to make this database a great source of information.
ASME Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The ABSOLUTE go-to database to search for your ME capstone project research. Includes journals from all aspects of Mechanical Engineering - search the entire database at once to see the breadth and depth of coverage on your topic. We subscribe to 8 journals in the collection, and can order articles from the other journals and proceedings through ILL - ask me for help!
AccessEngineering This link opens in a new window
Predominantly reference publications (handbooks, calculations, formulas); provides the tools and methods needed for analyzing and assessing engineering problems.
Knovel This link opens in a new window
Contains online monographs and reference books in many areas of science and engineering. It can be used early in the research process to become aware of general safety information for particular activities, processes, and substances, as well as later in research to learn more specifics about substances. Included are interactive tools that normalize information across content sources and bring content to life by making tables, charts, equations, plotters and graphs interactive.
Defense Technical Information Center This link opens in a new window
Citations to unclassified documents in DTIC's Technical Reports Collection, many with full text.
CAC enabled login. Only faculty and staff are eligible to register for full access.

Finding Background Information

When searching for information on your capstone project, start by searching for keywords related to your topic in Scout. Books, ebooks, newspaper articles, and journal articles found using Scout will provide both background and detailed information on your topic.

DoD and US Govt Engineering Resources on the Web

US Army Corps of Engineers, at http://www.usace.army.mil/Pages/default.aspx : the Web Headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers, with information about the Agency, its mission and work, and services to the public and the military.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Scientific and Technical Information: free public access to over 230,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of the Office of Scientific Information research report literature from 1991 to present, covering physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer & information science, renewable energy, and other topics of interest related to DOE's mission.

Selected Internet Resources - Engineering - A compilation of engineering resources from around the web, at http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/selected-internet/engineering.html

NTIS | Home http://www.ntis.gov/ - The National Technical Information Service's National Technical Reports Library (NTRL), which collects the results of federally funded research. Open to all for search and discovery; requires free registration for access to full-text documents.

Major Changes in Store for NIST Cyber Security Standards | TechRoots http://www.nist.gov/index.html - The National Institute of Standards and Technology is one of the nation's oldest physical science laboratories. Explore research and standards in a wide variety of subject areas.

https://www.army.mil/call - The Center for Army Lessons Learned collects, analyzes, disseminates, and archives lessons and best practices while maintaining global situational awareness in order to share knowledge and facilitate the Army's and Unified Action Partners' adaptation to win wars.