hanhuark/mechanical-engineering-research-skill

# Mechanical Engineering Research

## Skill Suite

Use this skill as the cross-cutting coordinator when a request spans multiple research activities. For a focused deliverable, use the specialist skill that owns it:

- [thermal-fluid-analysis](../thermal-fluid-analysis/SKILL.md): thermal-fluid physics, experiments, CFD, correlations, uncertainty, scaling, and design tradeoffs.
- [research-writing-literature](../research-writing-literature/SKILL.md): literature synthesis, citations, introductions, manuscript sections, and figure-led discussion.
- [research-proposal-development](../research-proposal-development/SKILL.md): solicitation-aligned proposals, review criteria, preliminary results, milestones, risks, and proposal figures.
- [research-data-analysis](../research-data-analysis/SKILL.md): baseline cases, hypothesis-driven DOE, reproducible analysis, plots, CFD/experimental data, and ML evaluation.
- [research-slide-design](../research-slide-design/SKILL.md): research talks, posters, visual logic, speaker notes, and presentation QA.
- [research-schematic-design](../research-schematic-design/SKILL.md): publication-quality editable facility, mechanism, workflow, and graphical-abstract schematics.
- [research-mentor-review](../research-mentor-review/SKILL.md): constructive student-facing feedback with prioritized, actionable next steps.
- [reviewer-author-loop](../reviewer-author-loop/SKILL.md): iterative reviewer critique, author revision, verification, and re-review.

# Research Data Analysis

## Purpose

Produce understanding, not an exhaustive parameter sweep. Use a detailed baseline case to demonstrate the measurement/model chain, then choose experiments or simulations that can prove or disprove a stated hypothesis.

## Route To References

- For baseline-first DOE, figure discussion, and technical analysis structure, read `references/technical-writing-analysis.md`.
- For reproducible research code and data pipelines, read `references/research-coding.md`.
- For AI/ML-assisted thermal-fluid analysis, read `references/ai-tools-thermal-fluids.md`.

## Hypothesis-Driven DOE

# Research Mentor Review

## Purpose

Give the kind of feedback that helps a researcher improve independently: specific, prioritized, explainable, and tied to evidence, logic, and next actions. This is a mentoring workflow, not an impersonation of any advisor and not a substitute for authorship, supervisory judgment, or safety review.

## Review Workflow

1. Identify the deliverable, audience, decision it must support, available evidence, and the research stage.
2. Start with what the work currently establishes and what remains unsupported.
3. Review the highest-risk issues first: research question, novelty/gap logic, methods, assumptions, evidence quality, analysis, physical interpretation, and claim strength.
4. Then address communication: paragraph/slide logic, citation practice, figures, tables, reproducibility, code, and presentation clarity.
5. Convert each important critique into an actionable revision, validation, or question. Explain why it matters.

# Research Proposal Development

## Purpose

Turn an important research question into a reviewer-decision-ready proposal. Preserve the investigator's scientific direction and distinguish verified preliminary evidence, proposed work, assumptions, and collaborator-dependent commitments.

## Route To Reference

Read `references/proposal-development.md` before drafting a full narrative, responding to review criteria, planning proposal figures, integrating preliminary results, or polishing a submission.

Read `references/budget-and-justification.md` before building a budget, writing a budget justification, preparing a subaward budget, or reconciling the budget with the narrative.

## Workflow

# Research Schematic Design

## Purpose

Create figures that clarify a scientific claim without inventing evidence. A publication schematic is an engineering artifact: its geometry, flow directions, symbols, labels, color semantics, and stated scale must agree with the manuscript, data, and method.

## Route To References

- Read `references/schematic-brief.md` to turn the request into a complete technical brief.
- Read `references/schematic-workflow.md` to choose native-vector, hybrid, or image-editing production.
- Read `references/scientific-visual-qa.md` before delivering or inserting a figure into a manuscript, slide deck, proposal, or poster.
- Start from `assets/templates/schematic-brief.yaml` when the user needs a reusable figure specification.

## Core Rules

# Research Slide Design

## Purpose

Make technical presentations easy to follow and visually calm. A listener should be able to anticipate the reason for slide N+1 from slide N, while the presenter supplies the interpretation that the slide does not repeat.

## Route To Reference

Read `references/presentation-slides.md` before building an outline, editing slides, creating speaker notes, designing a poster, or planning animations and videos.

## Design Rules

- Establish one claim, question, or transition per slide; use section transitions when the logic changes.
- Treat every visual group as having its own rectangle of space. Maintain clear separation between title, figure, annotation, legend, takeaway, and navigation elements.

# Research Writing And Literature

## Purpose

Build a research story rather than a sequence of paper summaries. Every paragraph needs a central topic, normally in its first sentence; each later sentence must develop, support, qualify, or transition from it.

When AI is used to draft or substantially revise the document, first use [author-guided-ai-writing.md](../mechanical-engineering-research/references/author-guided-ai-writing.md) to obtain an author-approved story brief and claim-evidence map. Drafting and line editing do not replace those author decisions.

Before a substantial draft or structural revision, identify the reader, the decision or scientific understanding the section must support, the evidence that carries the central claim, and what the reader should know after the section. Write the structure from that reader-to-evidence path instead of filling a generic manuscript template.

## Route To References

- For critical literature synthesis, read `references/literature-review.md`.
- For journal-paper structure and results-led storytelling, read `references/paper-writing-style.md`.

# Reviewer-Author Loop

## Purpose

Use this skill to run a closed-loop manuscript improvement process:

1. A **Reviewer Agent** evaluates the manuscript as a skeptical but constructive peer reviewer.
2. An **Author Agent** revises the manuscript and response plan to address the review.
3. A **Verifier Agent** checks that the revision actually resolves the comments and does not introduce new problems.
4. The loop repeats until the reviewer recommends acceptance or the author/verifier reaches a pause condition requiring human input.

This skill is distinct from one-pass peer review. Its value is the revision loop, traceable comment resolution, and explicit stop/pause decision.

## Confidentiality

# Thermal-Fluid Analysis

## Purpose

Develop decision-ready thermal-fluid analysis without separating numerical output from physical meaning. State what is measured, simulated, derived, assumed, or inferred; retain units, sign conventions, property states, system boundaries, and applicability limits.

## Analysis Workflow

1. Define the system: geometry, working fluid, operating regime, boundary conditions, performance metrics, and constraints.
2. Establish the physical model: governing balances, material properties and their evaluation state, dimensionless groups, competing mechanisms, and expected limiting behavior.
3. Select evidence: standards, handbooks, peer-reviewed work, calibrated measurements, validated CFD, or correlations inside their stated range.
4. Test credibility: dimensional consistency, conservation, order of magnitude, limiting cases, uncertainty/sensitivity, and an independent analytical or empirical check where possible.
5. Conclude by mechanism and tradeoff: performance, pressure drop or pumping power, manufacturability, reliability, cost, safety, scaling, and residual risk.