Engineering Calculators & Calculation Tools

What Are the Best Free Unit Converters for Engineers?

Time wasted repeating the same unit conversions every day - whether it's PSI to MPa, inches to mm, BTU to joules, horsepower to watts, gallons per minute to litres per second - so you can spend more time designing. You may need to perform 5 conversions just to get through your morning design work. While performing these conversions manually may not take up too much of your time, there's always a risk of making a simple arithmetic error when rapidly switching between different unit systems whether it's strictly imperial, strictly metric, or a combination of both. Converting from a compound unit, such as pound-force per square inch to megapascals, can be particularly prone to error.

UnitConverters.net will handle 99% of the common engineering unit conversions on the web with instant results as you type. Simple design, no annoying ads in the conversion fields. Includes coverage for length and mass, as well as temperature (Celsius to Fahrenheit), pressure (psi to MPa, bar to psia, etc.), energy (Joules to Calories, etc.), power (watts to horsepower, etc.), torque (pound-feet to newton-meters, etc.), flow rate (gpm to liters/minute, etc.) and viscosity (poise to reyn, etc.). Simply type "1000 psi" and see "6.895 MPa" instantly, without having to open multiple web pages or click through several pages to find the simple conversion you need. Bookmark this page for easy reference and always get to the same, simple unit converter instead of searching "psi to mpa converter" nightly.

For those looking to convert quantities with completely engineering specific unit names, like stress (psi, ksi, MPa, GPa) or moment of inertia (in⁴, mm⁴) or section modulus, or thermal conductivity (BTU·in/(hr·ft²·°F)), or even viscosity (centipoise, Pa·s), or many others that get unnecessarily complicated for general use, ConvertUnits.com is there to help. Stress analysis, thermal design, fluid mechanics calculations all rely on precise conversion of quantities expressed in these sorts of unfamiliar units.

OnlineConversion.com also provides detailed conversion tables showing all the relevant values for a given conversion. Unlike the previous features, these conversion tables show all of the equivalent values at once: e.g., 100 psi = 689.5 kPa = 6.895 bar = 0.6895 MPa = 6.804 atm. This feature is very useful, especially when collaborating with online international teams.

Stick to a single converter and save it as a favorite or one click shortcut. The point of having unit conversion web pages is to use them instead of manually calculating the number of times you need to multiply by four to convert from degrees to radians. Instead of wasting 20 minutes per week on this sort of tedious calculator work, make a habit of using a single, accurate converter that does it all for you, right from your browser or whatever engineering application you use. Best of all, the tool is free (although probably encoded in a piece of human capital paying for the engineer's time to use it). Review our engineering math fundamentals to strengthen your unit analysis skills.

Where Can I Find Free Beam Deflection Calculators?

The quick beam check � a common problem in mechanical design. How much load will a cantilevered bracket support? What deflection will occur under a distributed load to allow for a shelf design? Or, for a simply supported beam with a point load at the center of the span, what stress will develop in the member? While a full FEA solution may be needed for more complex configurations using a robust commercial software solution, for simple beam configurations, there are free online beam calculators that can quickly return values for bending moments and section moments, shear force, deflection, and stress for a variety of typical configurations.

WebStructural allows you to specify the flange and web beam dimensions as well as pinned or cantilevered conditions. You can then add loads to the beam and analyse as you type. The moment diagram is dynamically updated as you add new loads. WebStructural does not require you to download software that takes ages to launch or create new accounts. The software is also intuitively laid out with easy to locate buttons, allowing you to easily enter details of the cross section (material properties, geometry), loading configuration, and have results such as maximum stress, deflection at any point, and reactions provided live.

The SkyCiv Beam Calculator can solve for many loading cases including point loads, distributed loads, and moments, as well as mixed boundary conditions all at once for a single beam. The free version of SkyCiv Beam can solve for typical beam loading cases, such as a simply supported or cantilever beam with point loads at midspan or either end. The bending moment diagrams and normal force diagrams are also shown to verify that the actual loading meets the intended loading. Good for checking homework or hand calculations before presenting full design to management/staff &/or before submitting plans to a certifier/engineer.

Calcs.com free calculators cover a range of calculations including beam analysis, bolt group calculations and the moment of inertia for common shapes as well as for a user defined cross section. All of the calculations are worked out and displayed as a report, complete with full working to help learn beam theory or to provide calculations that have been used as backing for reports etc. The results include the maximum bending stress, maximum shear stress, the maximum deflection and all the reactions for the given beam constraints.

These calculators are best suited for preliminary design checks, homework verification, or hand calculations. They should NOT be used for final design of critical structures unless absolutely necessary. The calculator will calculate exactly what you tell it to, but it is up to you to make sure that the boundary conditions entered into the calculator accurately represent the actual conditions of the beam you are designing. The method of support, the loading assumptions, and the material properties all have a large impact on the final design of a beam. It is crucial to have a good grasp of beam theory before using these calculators. They are meant to be time savers after you have done your work and double checked your hand calculations. Learn beam theory from fundamentals first so you understand what you're calculating, then use calculators to speed up the math after you've set up the problem correctly.

Which Free Material Databases Can I Use Right Now?

The datasheet for the material you need most seems to disappear at the very moment you require it. Typically, a textbook properties table contains information for about 10 common engineering alloys and 5 generic plastics, with perhaps a few 'special case' materials thrown in for good measure. Suppliers often know the material by trade name only and can only provide the information sales staff are able to look up behind your back. After a while you find out what real-world information you need: yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, elastic modulus, thermal conductivity, density, and coefficient of thermal expansion, for maybe a dozen or so materials that actually get specified in your line of work. A material property database makes it possible to quickly search the engineering properties of thousands of materials that have been verified for accuracy.

MatWeb - Access mechanical, physical, thermal and environmental property data for over 150,000 materials: metals and alloys (steels, aluminum, titanium and surgical implants, copper, nickel and other specialty metals), plastics (acrylics, polyimides, PPS, Epoxy, engineering resins: ABS, polyurethane, polycarbonate, PC/ABS, nylon, PI, PEEK, Polyetherimide, acetal and others) and advanced materials (ceramic systems: alumina, advanced silicon carbide, glass fibers, fiberglass reinforced plastics, carbon fibers). Search by name and description of material, by manufacturer name and location or by property values such as Yield Strength, Tensile Strength, Modulus of Elasticity and more. Information is organized by section that includes typical mechanical and physical properties as well as thermal properties for each listed material.

Engineering Toolbox has put together a bunch of tables on common engineering materials by category. Good for initial selections when you don't know the name of a particular material. Also just good for having around to quickly compare certain properties, like the strength of different plastics relative to ABS shelf, or the thermal conductivity of aluminum compared to copper. The data is not as comprehensive as MatWeb, but it's much easier to peruse when you don't know what you're looking for yet.

The AZoM material database is a collection of technical articles written about individual material classes explaining their material properties, processing methods and typical applications, as well as a collection of tables filled with properties for said materials. Useful for those trying to learn about a particular class of materials or understanding why an alloy can have a 3 fold increase in price for seemingly similar mechanical properties. The articles help give context that the tables alone cannot provide.

Online databases can be used to compare the data sheets of a multitude of materials and to select an initial material of choice. The released design should use data from the supplier's datasheet, not a database. Material properties can change based on the grade of the material, how it was processed, and heat treat conditions. There can also be variability lot to lot. A good online database for this information is MatWeb which lists typical values for 6061-T6 aluminum. In reality the actual material supplied by your vendor can vary by �5% so for critical designs you should request certified test data from the supplier showing the actual properties of the lot you are going to purchase. Databases give you starting points. Suppliers give you guaranteed values.

What Are the Best Steam Table and Fluid Property Calculators?

Thermodynamic and fluid property lookups are often a slow and painful process in simulating thermal systems. In most cases, people require to manually interpolate printed tables to obtain the steam enthalpy at 150 psi and 400�F. For refrigerants such as R-134a, looking up the properties at specific conditions usually involves pouring through pages of charts and tables to find what you need. For aerodynamic drag calculations, looking up air density and viscosity at altitude also requires a lot of assumptions and approximations from limited tables. Now, online calculators can perform these lookups exactly and instantaneously, eliminating the need for 10 minutes of work per lookup.

NIST WebBook thermophysical properties database is the source of reliable property information provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Look up any pure substance (water, steam, air, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, dozens of refrigerants, etc.) for entropy, enthalpy, specific volume, dynamic viscosity, thermal conductivity, and Prandtl number. With complete experimental uncertainty associated with each property value, you can obtain data from anywhere (work or school, home or business) down to a few Kelvin for virtually ideal gases and many incompressible liquids and solids and a few bar for most materials. All the information in the WebBook is based on government certified measurements that are appropriate for scientific calculations and formal presentations found in published literature. It is used around the world as a standard reference.

The TLV Steam Tables Calculator specializes in calculating properties of steam and condensate applicable to heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration as well as industrial process applications. Simply select a temperature (�C or F) or pressure (kPa absolute) and view the corresponding table entries for Saturated or Superheated steam. Enthalpy, specific volume and viscosity are displayed along with the quality for Saturated steam. This tool is particularly useful for sizing and selecting steam traps, calculating and verifying condensate loads, determining piping sizes for distribution of steam, and evaluating the efficiency of boilers. The calculator interface is designed for use by mechanical engineers involved in thermal design, not by students seeking to learn tables of thermodynamic properties.

The Engineering Toolbox fluid mechanics calculators tackle the practical problems. Pipe friction loss of fluid in pipe in - pressure, Reynolds number, head, pipe size, duct sizing for air handling units. These calculators are very useful for quick calculations where the equation is known, but the friction factor or a fluid property is to be computed.

These tools are most useful for those involved in HVAC design, thermal systems and fluid mechanics. For the most accurate results in your work, consult NIST WebBook for thermophysical properties data. For a quick check to verify initial steam piping sizes during equipment selection, consult TLV for instant calculations. For initial sizing checks, create pipe design layouts on Engineering Toolbox for a preliminary pipe sizing estimate. All three tools are free, provide little chance of error and are much faster than searching for and accurately transcribing data from print sources.

Where Can I Find Bolt Torque and Mechanical Design Calculators?

Even when using tried and true methods for making mechanical design calculations, there is always a lot of routine math that needs to be done to arrive at the answers that you can really work with. Calculating the correct torque for bolt installation � based on thread, grade of bolt, and lubrication � is very different from determining the appropriate rate for a compression spring � based on wire diameter, coil diameter, number of coils, and modulus of the spring material. Identifying the dimensions of a gear tooth, such as pitch diameter, base circle, and the geometry of the involute profile, is far removed from determining the diameter of a shaft called to handle both bending and torsion stresses. Fitting a belt drive to a motor involves matching horsepower required by the driven load to the motor's capabilities. Assembling a collection of parts together requires a tolerance stack calculation. Free online design calculators perform the grunt work for you, so you can focus on finding out whether your design will work.

Engineers Edge calculators cover most of the major mechanical design calculations including: bolt and fastener (screw thread) and spring (rings, eye, conical spring, etc.), gear (spline, bevel, spur gear, etc.), shaft (including combined loading) and bearing calculations. Also included are tolerances, stress concentration factors and pressure vessel calculations. Each calculator shows the related formulas and assumptions used. These are great references to aid your design while you can bypass looking up coefficients and constants.

MechaniCalc is a web site with free mechanical engineering calculators with full documentation of the design theory behind each calculation. Its bolted joint calculators will show you the proper preload, the clamping force, the factor of safety against yield, and the factor of safety against fatigue. Shaft design calculators will determine deflection, critical speed, and combined stress due to both bending and torsion. Spring calculators will confirm the solid height, free length, stress, and deflection of Belleville washers, conical springs, spring o-rings, solid springs, and stacked wire wire springs. Documentation in design reports for machine design and other fields can be provided as you learn machine design.

These Bolt torque calculators have been set up to calculate the installation torque for bolts and other similar fasteners. The calculations are based on the fastener's diameter, grade, and lubricated or dry state, and are designed to prevent over torque, which can result in stripped threads, or under torque, which can allow joints to loosen over time. The torque-tension calculations are based on standard coefficients for thread friction and under-head friction.

These tools are not intended for final design or production information, but are intended for use in preliminary sizing and verification of design concepts. As with any design tool, they must be used in conjunction with an understanding of machine design fundamentals. The calculator assumes that the user has a basic understanding of the calculator's output, and that the calculator's results are being checked by hand-book methods or detailed Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for unusual loads or custom geometries. Additionally, physical testing should be performed on any critical safety application to verify results. Also, remember that bad inputs produce bad outputs, even when the math is correct. Therefore, it is essential to understand machine design fundamentals from a textbook and engineering fundamentals before using these calculators to free up your time to do more interesting things than arithmetic.

Using Calculators Without Replacing Engineering Judgment

Our beam and structural calculators are useful for engineers, students, technical workers, and hobbyists. They're great for checking your hand calculations before submitting engineering designs, university homework, technical instruction, or documentation for a work project. Use our online beam calculators to check your work before submitting your work product to a supervisor, or to verify that you've correctly solved a homework problem in class. You can also use our calculators to design a component or entire structure for your home workshop, outbuilding, or project, and to check a number of factors before you start building. Keep in mind that calculators can save you a lot of time, but they will not teach you how to design. For instance, a beam deflection calculator will tell you the deflection of a simply supported beam, but cannot tell if you have properly selected support conditions for the actual problem at hand. A materials database can look up the properties of a given building material, but cannot explain why your prototype failed due to a rapid internal crack.

These tools are math helpers, not design authorities. Learn the fundamental principles behind design from a solid textbook or online reference, understand the theoretical basis behind the numbers, and then use these tools as an aid to reduce your work. Verify that the results are reasonable. A beam deflection calculation gone wrong is usually the result of a mistake on your part, or a lack of understanding of the principles underlying the calculation. Calculators multiply good engineering judgment by poor assumptions. Make sure you are multiplying the good by one and not the other.