Housing (engineering)

In engineering, a housing or enclosure is a container, a protective exterior (e.g. shell) or an enclosing structural element (e.g. chassis or exoskeleton) designed to enable easier handling, provide attachment points for internal mechanisms (e.g. mounting brackets for electrical components, cables and pipings), maintain cleanliness of the contents by shielding dirt/dust, fouling and other contaminations, or protect interior mechanisms (e.g. delicate integrated electrical fittings) from structural stress and/or potential physical, thermal, chemical, biological or radiational damages from the surrounding environment.

It may also have integrated fittings or brackets to keep internal components in place; sometimes a housing is the body of the device, vital to its function.

Housings can also play a safety role, by providing a barrier between people and dangerous or fast-moving mechanisms.

[4] Housing may need to provide a user interface for the internal devices, such as for televisions and video game controllers.

Interchangeable faceplates provide a method to update the cosmetics of the housing without replacing the entire enclosure.