ME 266K - Mechanical Engineering Design Project

Searching engineering topics can be frustrating --- result sets seem to be either HUGE or tiny.  Besides finding the right place to search, finding the right terms can take time and patience. 

Here are several things to try:

• Use synonyms
• Use broader terms
• Add in other terms to try to focus the search
• Check the defaults of the search interface.  They may not be as you expect; words may be searched as a phrase
• Look at the indexing terms of search results that are good matches
• Use limits
• Follow citations to see what publications cite an earlier work you've found valuable.

You might have this kind of situation:

Are there books or research articles on the treaded track component of small construction vehicles?  Searching "treads" brings in tires and we weren't thinking of tires. "Tracks" includes trains.  "Tanks" (thinking of how military tanks have treaded tracks) finds all sorts of unrelated kinds of tanks. 

Internet browsing suggests "crawler" for the vehicle and "continuous track" to help distinguish the type of track.  Or maybe "rubber tracked" to specify the kind of track (not for trains) if rubber is being used.  "Tracked vehicle" seems useful for identifying the right (broader) class of vehicles.  Testing helps us see how terms perform and help lead to new words.

• Google Books can help with testing and finding words and phrases in books.
• Compendex lets you test and find while exploring the language of engineering research papers.

An addendum: An expert --- a faculty member who had done research in this area --- told us of using the phrase "track-laying vehicle" in his resarch group!