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FE Exam Practice Questions

Practice realistic FE-style engineering questions with step-by-step reasoning and detailed solutions. Choose your discipline or start solving now.

FE-style problems•Reasoning explained•Solutions included

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E-053 · FE MECHANICALThermodynamics

The Refrigerator With a COP Greater Than One

The refrigerator removed 6 kW of heat using 2 kW of work. A COP of 3 was correct, not impossible.

Refrigerator CopIntermediate5–10 min

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FE QUESTION BANK

Available FE practice questions

Choose a question and solve it before reading the final engineering verdict.

E-053Thermodynamics

The Refrigerator With a COP Greater Than One

The refrigerator removed 6 kW of heat using 2 kW of work. A COP of 3 was correct, not impossible.

Refrigerator Cop5–10 min

E-052Thermodynamics

The Turbine That Produced 1.2 MW From an Enthalpy Drop

The turbine power came from a 600 kJ/kg enthalpy drop, not from subtracting internal energies blindly.

Steady Flow Energy Equation5–10 min

E-051Thermodynamics

The Sealed Tank That Reached 150 kPa, Not 133

The gas temperature rose from 300 K to 450 K. The pressure did not scale with Celsius temperature.

Ideal Gas Constant Volume5–10 min

E-050Fluid Mechanics Hydraulics

The Channel That Carried 5.69 Cubic Meters per Second

The flow area alone was not enough. Hydraulic radius and slope set the channel discharge.

Manning Open Channel Flow5–10 min

E-049Fluid Mechanics Hydraulics

The Faster Pipe Section That Lost 16 kPa of Pressure

The pipe stayed level. Velocity increased from 2 to 6 m/s, and pressure fell from 300 to 284 kPa.

Bernoulli Equation5–10 min

E-048Fluid Mechanics Hydraulics

The Pipe That Halved Its Diameter and Quadrupled Its Velocity

The diameter fell by half. The velocity did not merely double—it rose from 1.5 to 6.0 m/s.

Continuity Equation5–10 min

E-047Fluid Mechanics Hydraulics

The Tank Gauge That Read 58.9 kPa at 6 m

The water was motionless, but pressure still increased with depth.

Fluid Statics Hydrostatic Pressure5–10 min

E-046Structural Engineering

The Column That Buckled Near 497 kips

The steel strength was not the first limit. Slender-column instability governed near 497 kips.

Euler Buckling5–10 min

E-045Structural Engineering

The Beam Moment That Peaked at 75 kip-ft, Not 300

The total load was 30 kips. Multiplying by half the span produced the wrong bending moment.

Simply Supported Beam Maximum Moment5–10 min

E-044Structural Engineering

The Floor Beam That Was Loaded at 400 lb/ft, Not 50

The floor load was 50 psf. The beam did not carry 50 lb/ft—it carried 400 lb/ft.

Tributary Area Load Conversion5–10 min

The Truss Diagonal That Carried More Than the Support Reaction

Each support reaction was only 6 kN, yet each inclined top member carried about 8.49 kN.

Truss Method Of Joints5–10 min

The Beam Reactions That Refused to Split 50-50

The total load was 28 kN, but the support reactions were not 14 kN each.

Rigid Body Equilibrium Support Reactions5–10 min

The Two Cables That Each Carried 10 kN

A 10 kN load was shared by two cables, but each cable still carried 10 kN of tension.

Force Equilibrium Cable Tension5–10 min

E-040Computer Networks

The Router That Ignored the Shorter-Looking Route

Two routes matched the destination. The router chose the more specific prefix, not the visually simpler route.

Longest Prefix Match5–10 min

E-039Computer Networks

The 1500-Byte Packet That Did Not Arrive in 12 Microseconds

Serialization took only 12 microseconds. The fiber path added another 500 microseconds.

Network Delay Components5–10 min

E-038Computer Networks

The /27 Network That Could Not Fit 40 Devices

The subnet looked large enough from the address range. The usable host count said otherwise.

Ipv4 Subnetting Host Capacity5–10 min

E-037Communications

The Four-Channel FDM Link That Needed 95 kHz

Four 20 kHz channels looked like an 80 kHz job—until the guard bands were counted.

Frequency Division Multiplexing Bandwidth5–10 min

E-036Communications

The PCM Link That Needed 64 kbps, Not 32

The voice channel bandwidth was 4 kHz. The data link was sized at 32 kbps and immediately overflowed.

Pcm Bit Rate5–10 min

E-035Communications

The AM Signal Whose Envelope Pinched Shut

The carrier was 5 V. The message amplitude was 6 V. The envelope detector stopped reproducing the message cleanly.

Am Modulation Index5–10 min

E-034Control Systems

The Higher-Gain Loop That Crossed Into Instability

Increasing gain improved response—until the characteristic equation crossed the stability limit.

Closed Loop Stability Routh5–10 min

E-033Control Systems

The Bode Plot That Lost 20 dB in One Decade

The low-frequency gain was 40 dB. One decade past the pole, the response was near 20 dB.

First Order Bode Pole5–10 min

E-032Control Systems

The Gain-10 Loop That Only Reached 0.909

The forward gain was 10. The closed-loop output did not become 10 times the reference.

Unity Feedback Closed Loop Response5–10 min

E-031Power Systems

The 8 Ohm Load That Became 128 Ohms

The secondary load was 8 Ω. The primary source did not see 8 Ω—or even 32 Ω.

Transformer Reflected Impedance5–10 min

E-030Power Systems

The Feeder That Delivered 228 V Instead of 240 V

The source measured 240 V. The load saw only 228 V because the feeder resistance was treated as one-way.

Distribution Voltage Drop5–10 min

E-029Power Systems

The Motor Load That Drew More Current Than the kW Suggested

The load was only 30 kW, but the feeder current was much higher than the kW-only calculation predicted.

Three Phase Power Factor5–10 min

E-028Electronics

The Op-Amp That Tried to Output -10 V on ±5 V Rails

The gain equation requests -10 V, but the amplifier only has ±5 V rails.

Op Amp Saturation5–10 min

E-027Electronics

The Transistor That Refused to Amplify 100×

An NPN switch has VCC = 5 V, Rc = 100 Ω, β = 100, and Ib = 1 mA. βIb predicts 100 mA, but with VCE(sat) ≈ 0.2 V the collector circ

Bjt Saturation5–10 min

E-026Electronics

The Protection Diode That Starved the 5 V Sensor

The reverse-polarity protection worked, but the 5 V sensor would not start.

Diode Forward Voltage5–10 min

E-025Signal Processing

The Digital Filter That Lagged a Perfect Step

A perfect step arrived. The filter answered 2.0 instead of 10.

Digital Filter Difference Equation5–10 min

E-024Signal Processing

The 1 kHz Filter That Only Passed 70.7%

A 'passband' tone reached the cutoff and lost nearly 30% of its amplitude.

Analog Low Pass Cutoff5–10 min

E-023Signal Processing

The Vibration Sensor That Invented a 300 Hz Tone

The machine says 900 Hz. The sampled spectrum insists on 300 Hz.

Sampling Aliasing5–10 min

E-022Linear Systems

The Transfer Function That Settled at 5, Not 20

The numerator says 20. The unit-step output settles at 5. The model is working exactly as written.

Transfer Function Dc Gain5–10 min

E-021Linear Systems

The RLC Circuit That Peaked Instead of Filtering

Both reactive components looked like opposition. At resonance, they canceled and the current doubled the protection limit.

Series Rlc Resonance5–10 min

E-020Linear Systems

The Capacitor That Drew Too Much Current

The steady-state current is zero. At switch-on, the circuit violates its 5 mA startup limit.

Rc Transient Initial Condition5–10 min

E-019Circuit Analysis

The Voltage Divider That Collapsed Under Load

The divider measured exactly 6 V with no load. Connect one load, and the output falls to 4 V.

Voltage Divider Loading6–10 min

E-018Circuit Analysis

The Parallel Load That Tripped the Supply

Each branch looked safe. The supply still tripped the instant the second load was connected.

Parallel Circuits6–10 min

E-017Circuit Analysis

The Circuit That Shouldn’t Have Burned

A 12 V source is connected across a required 2 Ω load. The calculated and measured current is 6 A, but the resistor overheats and fails within seconds. Identify the missing engineering check, prove the root cause, and choose a safe correction.

Electrical Power5–10 min

QUICK ANSWER

Where can I find FE exam practice questions with solutions?

Fried Engineers provides FE-style practice questions organized by discipline and topic. Each interactive Case File makes you commit to an answer, test it against evidence, revise unsupported reasoning, and then review the detailed solution.

Are these official previous-year FE questions?

No. Unless a question is explicitly identified from an authorized source, Fried Engineers labels original material as FE-style practice rather than claiming it is an official previous-year question.

Do the FE questions include solutions?

Yes. Complete the investigation to unlock the engineering verdict, corrected reasoning, and key takeaway.

Can I practice by FE discipline?

Yes. Start with a discipline such as Electrical & Computer, then move into focused topic practice such as Circuit Analysis.