EngChain: A Symbolic Benchmark for Verifiable Multi-Step Reasoning in Engineering

Abstract: LLMs are increasingly being applied to specialized, high-stakes domains like engineering, which demands rigorous evaluation of their complex reasoning capabilities. While current benchmarks assess language understanding, factual recall, mathematics or code generation, none capture the integrative reasoning central to engineering where scientific principles, quantitative modeling and practical constraints must converge. To address this gap, we introduce EngChain, a benchmark for verifiable multi-step engineering problem-solving. EngChain contains 90 problems spanning three engineering branches, organized into 9 domains and 20 distinct areas. The problems are generated from symbolic templates with a high degree of randomization to ensure diversity and eliminate the risk of contamination. With this benchmark, we move beyond final answer accuracy with a two-stage evaluation: we first quantitatively verify the numerical and semantic validity of each reasoning step and then introduce LLM-As-A-Judge, an automated system to qualitatively categorize the identified reasoning errors.