Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam

This is as massive as the MERM itself. It has probably around a thousand example problems in it with worked out solutions. I recommend starting here. I spent a month and a half reading the MERM cover to cover and that was a waste of time. In one eye and out the other. Get the MERM, this and the Quick Reference and just start doing problems. I recommend spending about an hour on each chapter of problems and using the MERM as your reference on how to solve them. There are some chapters later on you'll know you can skip or skim (Advanced Alternative Energy, Nuclear Power Plants, almost the entire Plant Engineering section, Ethics). Use the NEECS test guidance (its in the front of the MERM) to determine what you shouldn't waste time studying. After you've done that take the NEECS sample breadth exam. Then go back and do every single problem in your depth area, then take the NEECS sample depth exam in your area. At this point you should know about where you stand and what you need to keep studying. All of that above took me about 100 hours to do. I've currently got almost 200 hours of studying under my belt but about 60 of them were mostly wasted hours reading the MERM. I started to get burned out so I've moved on to the 6 minute solution books despite the poor reviews and really like them. I'm estimating I'll end up with a little less than 240 hours of studying under my belt by the time the exam hits in a few weeks (I keep a daily log for tracking and motivation purposes). If thats not enough then nothing probably will be. My only complaint is that there are not enough exam level questions in here, these are either really basic or really hard with relatively few in between. Im basing that off the NEECS sample exam challenge level. I hope that is representative because then I feel I may have a decent chance of passing. I dont plan on doing this more than once!

This may be the only good Practice Problem Book, so take that for what it's worth. Also, haven't taken the PE exam yet.This book is very frustrating, because many of the problems are poorly-worded or poorly diagrammed, such that the answer isn't obvious until you turn to the solution and say "WHAT?".Some examples (FAIR USE-illustrative)Problem 48-8. Asks you to give the term for a material whose "properties are invariant with direction", which describes an isotropic material. Except that "Isotropic" isn't one of the answers given. So you turn to the solution, which says "An Anisotropic material looks and behaves the same in every direction." Which is exactly opposite of what an anisotropic material is.Problem 51-6 has you finding the thermally-induced tensile stress in a steel bolt that's holding a steel flange to an aluminum flange. The thermal growth of the aluminum is greater than the steel, which puts the bolt into tension. The problem statement gives you the CTE for steel and aluminum, but they're the same, which means that there's no thermally induced stress at all. So you turn to the solution and find that you can find a nonzero thermally induced stress if you use the correct CTE for aluminum.Problem 51-10 wants you to look at a beam in compression, and then find the normal stress out of the beam, based upon the compressive axial load and an applied shear at the section of interest. Basically, it's asking you to combine the shear in a plane with a stress that's normal to that plane, which is physically impossible. So you turn to the solution and it seems that whoever solved the problem didn't read it because he arbitrarily decided that the stress was in plane. Which is physically meaningful, but not what was put explicitly into the problem statement.So if you are willing to go to their classes and get the errata (I hope there's errata!), or print errata off their website, or just hope that you find all the errors this is a great book. If this is the only practice problems book, then it's adequate.

I passed the Fall 2017 PE Mechanical: Machine Design and Materials. I purchased four books and used one book I already owned (Shigley). I did around 100 hours of self-study.1. PE Exam Review for Mechanical Systems, Kennedy2. Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam, 13th Ed (this book)3. Six-Minute Solutions for Mechanical PE Exam Mechanical Systems and Materials Problems, 2nd Ed4. Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual for the PE Exam, 13th Ed5. Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design6. NCEES Practice Exam7. Printed and added to hand notes unit conversions, beam tables, MERM index, stress concentration tablesI started with the Kennedy book and read the whole thing front to back. Then I solved all of Six-Minute problems. Then I worked all of the problems of MERM practice problems for chapter 45-66. Throughout all of this I took notes on key points and marked pages in MERM and Shigley. About a month before the exam I took the practice exam and did pretty well. From there I just studied concepts or units I had missed.

The thing about this book is many of the problems take an hour, and they don't say which. It can be quite discouraging to think you should be finishing a huge problem in 6 minutes only to have it take you an hour plus. Also, it takes up more of your precious study time. This edition is simply no longer appropriate as preparation for the exam. 6-minute Solutions is superior in that if you can solve those problems in a few minutes, you will have a good shot at the exam. I passed on the first try.

I don't think this book is as good as the practice exams that are available, but it's still useful study material. The practice problems are at all different levels and not all of them are representative of what's on the test... but that is nice when you're very weak in a particular subject. You can work your way up to the last few problems in a section, which are usually the complex ones.The solutions are easy to follow and worked in both SI and English units (keep in mind PE is mostly English units). There are a few errors, but that's pretty typical in all solution manuals. I hear the later versions of the book have fixed most of the errors.I'm glad I rented this for the PE, but it I would not recommend *only* studying out of this. I probably used it as 40% of my review problems.