Starting your research for design projects

← Back to Engineering Library Instruction

04/12/12 - 04:45:08 PM - Jay Bhatt

Step 1: Starting with your particular topic, for example: Polymer Composite Fibers
Using Google Search and searching for You may find web resources such as : Fibers in Polymer Composites

The site provides mechanical properties of some common fibers used in polymer composites

Use Advanced search in Google for Polymer Composite Fibers to refine your search using various options.

Limit by latest web resources using 'Last Update' field
Limit by PDF in 'File Type' field
Limit by .Gov domain (or. edu, or .org domains) to obtain quality web resources

You will find web resources like

FIBER-REINFORCED POLYMER COMPOSITE MATERIAL SELECTION NASA report on material selection for design

Browse through various resources that you think are useful for your project.

See

Specific information needs for engineering design projects During the course of your design project, you may need references from manufacturer’s product datasheets, application notes, and whitepapers.

Step 2: After this initial search, refer to our presentation and start using various electronic databases and books covered Note: Library Presentation - Library Resources Freshman Engineering Online books, Handbooks and Encyclopedias

See Engineering electronic books from ENGnetBASE and other netBASE collections

For example, searching in ENGnetBASE finds a chapter on Properties of Fibers and Yarns

See Books 24×7 and Safari Tech Books for books on arduino robotics, computer science, software, database management, and operating systems, etc
Knovel scientific online handbooks
ASM Handbooks
Thermopedia
ebrary and NetLibrary Two extensive electronic book collections that cover many disciplines.

There are a number of reference books available online. How can I find out which reference books are available from our Library’s web site?

Finding scholarly journal articles

Try Summon to find books, articles and more. See also What is Summon? How can I use it? Click on Articles & More Tab in the Library Home page

Searching in Engineering Village, finds a research paper like Cohesive zone model of carbon nanotube-coated carbon fiber/polyester composites from a journal titled 'Modelling and simulation in materials science and engineering'. This article was published in 2012.

Step 3. Patent Searching

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) The USPTO offers web access to bibliographic and full-text patent databases. These databases provide full-text of patents from 1976 to the present and full page images from 1790 to the present.

See What is a Patent?

See Anatomy of a U.S. patent

See Patent Searching Tips.

See ‘What is Intellectual Property?’ in Frequently Asked Questions for Inventors

See ‘Manual of Patent Classification’

Fresh Patents Provides access to the latest published US patent applications each week BEFORE the USPTO decision to grant/deny.

pat2pdf.org Given a patent number, pat2pdf.org will return a free, pdf formated version of the patent.

The Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s to present.

Step 4: Statistical Resources

Science.gov Science.gov searches over 40 databases and over 2000 selected websites, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information, including research and development results.