Introduction to Engineering Curves

Engineering Curves is an important topic while learning the Engineering Drawing fundamentals. Various objects in the day to day life are made up of various kinds of shapes and sizes such as elliptical, paraboloid, hyperboloid, cycloidal, involute and helical. Sections formed by the intersection of a right circular cone by a plane in different positions relative to the axis of the cone are called conics . e.g. Parabola, hyperbola and ellipse are the conic curves which needs to be studied in this course for their geometrical constructions. There are a large number of applications for parabolic shapes. Some of these are in searchlight mirrors, telescopic mirrors, a beam of uniform strength in design applications, the trajectory of the weightless flight, etc. Hyperbolic shapes find a large number of industrial applications like the shape of cooling towers, mirrors used for long distance telescopes etc. The gear tooth profiles are generally made up of either cycloidal or involute type as well as the helical and spiral types of curves finds their application in manufacturing of springs used in suspension systems and in clocks. The students will be able to learn the Directrix Focus Method and Rectangle Method for drawing the geometrical constructions of the curves like ellipse, parabola and hyperbola. The students will also be able to learn the simple geometrical methods to draw the curves like cyloid, involute of a circle, Helix on cone and cylinder. This course will facilitates the learning of geometrical construction methods of various engineering curves.