Writing the Engineering Research Article

What do published engineering researchers actually do when they write?

This book answers that question using hard evidence. Drawing on a corpus of 163 engineering research articles comprising approximately 610,000 words, it reveals the rhetorical patterns, phrasal frequencies, and structural choices that define successful engineering papers.

Most academic writing guides are built around the IMRDC model (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion) borrowed from the social sciences. But engineering papers don't work that way. Only 1.2% of the articles in this corpus follow a full IMRDC structure. The vast majority organise their content under technical headings such as Finite Element Analysis, Computational Domain, Experimental Programme, blending methods, results, and interpretation into a single integrated flow. 

Across 16 units, the book covers every stage of the engineering research article: macrostructure and heading design, abstracts, introductions, mathematical and theoretical development, experimental and computational methods, results and interpretation, the validation move unique to engineering, discussion, and conclusions.