Mechanical Engineering

Mathematics is the fundamental language of engineering, allowing complex ideas to be described, formulated and developed. This module gives you a strong foundation of key mathematical techniques and methods required by most other modules in our engineering courses.

Topics covered include complex numbers, calculus, linear algebra, statistics and probability. Throughout the module, you’ll tackle real-world engineering problems. These include the study of mechanical and electrical systems, the use of complex numbers and linear algebra for the analysis of electrical circuits and the use of statistics and probability in the analysis of experimental data.

Electronics underpins all of modern life, from everyday household items to the most sophisticated supercomputers. It enables devices such as ultra-low power wearable health monitors through to megawatt wind turbines. 

You’ll begin your engineering journey by learning fundamental circuit analysis and fabrication skills. This will enable you to begin engineering project work right from your first year. 

You’ll also explore the vital and trusted role that engineers play in supporting and transforming society and infrastructure. You’ll do this by demonstrating your ability to consider societal issues essential to modern professional engineering.

Programming underpins all facets of modern life, from basic software applications to complex artificial intelligence systems. It enables everything from simple mobile apps to large-scale enterprise solutions. 

You'll embark on your programming journey here, mastering fundamental coding concepts and development skills. This foundation will empower you to dive into programming projects right from your first year through lectures, workshops and programming challenges. 

You’ll also examine the pivotal role of programmers in shaping and advancing society by exploring ethical and societal considerations essential to contemporary professional programming.

The success of an engineering product relies on the combination of careful mechanical design, strategic material selection, and a deep understanding of mechanics. These elements collectively shape the product's performance, durability, and overall effectiveness, highlighting their essential role in the development of any successful engineering solution.

You'll learn how to develop an engineering drawing of a product using a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) system and choose the best materials from a wide range of available engineering materials for your designed components.

This material selection process depends on the mechanical analysis of a component under various loading scenarios, which you will learn in this module. This knowledge will enable you to start developing an engineering project from your first year of study and practise it throughout your degree.

To bring your engineering education to life, you’ll do a project in each year of study. In the Stage 1 project, you’ll gain hands-on experience, allowing you to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world problems. This will enhance your understanding of engineering principles and concepts. 

Throughout this process, you will apply electronic and mechanical design skills and programming/software knowledge to describe and produce a physical solution in alignment with a technical specification. You are expected to acquire a foundational understanding of engineering hardware and software integration and verification. 

The module progresses through lectures, workshops, labs, and tutorials with supervision and technical guidance. It aims to provide you with hands-on and problem-solving skills in the concepts introduced in the Term 1 and Term 2 modules.

Understanding the mechanics of materials and structures, including the relationship between stress and strain, is fundamental to engineering design. You will use this knowledge as a foundation for predicting and preventing failure mechanisms in materials and structures, ensuring the integrity and safety of engineered systems.

In the complex world of engineering, a thorough grasp of these principles is essential for crafting robust and reliable structures. You will learn about the definition of internal loads in a structure which will generate stress and strain in a material.

You will then learn about the relationship between stress and strain under various loading scenarios and how this relationship would work in designing a mechanical component or structure. Furthermore, you will learn how to use various characterisation tests to measure various properties of materials as and predict the failure of a material.

Engineers work in interdisciplinary teams to overcome the challenges of intelligent engineering systems. Smart engineering systems are not simple mechanical or electronic components, but the result of synergistic integration between mechanical engineering, electronics, computer science and control.

You’ll learn to apply this interdisciplinary approach to develop innovative solutions that would not be possible with a single-discipline focus. You’ll gain applied knowledge of sensors, actuators, and data acquisition techniques which are crucial to modern engineering. After mastering the foundational concepts, you’ll progress to cover transducers, mechanical components and modelling of mechatronic systems.

You’ll further explore microprocessors and data acquisition processes and become familiar with actuator functions within mechatronic systems. Practical sessions will complement your theoretical learning, allowing you to apply concepts in hands-on scenarios with real-world systems.

A comprehensive understanding of fluid mechanics is essential to the discipline of engineering. In this module, you’ll be introduced to core concepts such as fluid properties, hydrostatics, mass, momentum and energy conservation principles, viscous flow behaviours, dimensional analysis, and drag/lift forces.

You’ll learn analytical techniques to quantify these phenomena and solve complex fluid mechanics problems that are integral to engineering systems and components. These include internal flows like pipe flow as well as external flows over immersed bodies and aerodynamic surfaces. You’ll learn to evaluate forces, energy requirements, power consumption, and performance parameters for systems involving fluids such as pumps, turbines, aerodynamic vehicles and more.

These concepts are reinforced through hands-on laboratory experiments as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that are employed to model and visualise complex flows. Overall, the module will help you develop essential knowledge and skills for analysing and solving fluid flow problems in engineering practice.

A strong understanding of dynamics and mechanism analysis is essential for crafting mechanical components with dynamic motion. This proficiency enables a comprehensive evaluation of forces, accelerations, velocities, and interactions, ensuring optimal performance across various applications. It’s at the core of high-value industries such as automotive or aerospace.

You’ll gain essential knowledge of kinematics and kinetics of particles and rigid bodies that you’ll apply to models and evaluate the velocity, acceleration, forces, and moment of rigid components.

You’ll also learn about mechanisms and machine design and how to analyse the dynamics of mechanisms before applying them to applications. You’ll also apply your skills and knowledge from this module in your projects.

Classical and modern manufacturing technologies play a key role in driving product development and innovation across various industrial sectors. Integrating these technologies into industrial applications promotes sustainable design and manufacturing, minimises waste and resource consumption and boosts the fabrication of new products and materials.

You’ll gain knowledge of state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies and modern techniques such as additive manufacturing. You’ll then acquire practical skills in using these technologies through several lab sessions and practices. This module also promotes the principles of sustainable design and green manufacturing, both of which reduce environmental impact and promote long-term viability and resilience.

Vibration is a common mechanical phenomenon and changes in vibration pattern may indicate likely wear, fault or failure of devices. Understanding vibration characteristics and their manipulation is therefore critical to ensuring the stability, safety and optimal operation of modern devices.

In this module, you’ll learn the principles of vibration theory, which will enable you to carry out critical analysis and design appropriate damping mechanisms. Vibration analysis includes damped vibration, free and forced vibration, MDOF systems, modelling of a tuned vibration absorber and vibration testing techniques. Additionally, your study of control systems will include system modelling in general, stability analysis, and PID controllers, and will include both continuous and discrete time systems.

Lecture materials, hands-on experiments, computer simulations and case studies are carefully designed to strengthen your learning experience. After successfully completing this module, you’ll have essential knowledge in vibration analysis and system control that is required for advanced engineering and working professionally in the field.

Teamwork lies at the heart of this module, seamlessly blending practical group projects with supporting lectures, emphasising the development of technical proficiency, transferable skills, sustainability, and security awareness. You will collaborate in teams to explore mechanical and electronic hardware, software development, entrepreneurship, and sustainable practices. Through hands-on project work, you will gain expertise in sensor data acquisition, programming, hardware design, understanding security protocols, and integrating sustainability principles. Additionally, you will address crucial topics such as innovation, financial management, intellectual property protection, and commercialisation strategies with a sustainable and security-oriented perspective. By merging technical knowledge with entrepreneurial insight, sustainability principles, and a focus on security, this module equips you with a comprehensive toolkit for navigating the complexities of modern innovation and enterprise securely and sustainably. 

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are currently the most exciting fields in engineering. We are preparing for a robotics and AI revolution that will change our lives at every level and bring us one step closer to the integration of humans and machines. 

You’ll comprehensively explore the key concepts in robotics and artificial intelligence and gain essential subject knowledge. You’ll learn theoretical tools to describe kinematics and dynamics for industrial robot systems with several degrees of freedom and use cutting-edge AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms in robots. You’ll also discover software/hardware integration in robot architectures for advanced tasks (e.g. obstacle avoidance learning), industrial applications and the adoption of AI in robotics. 

You’ll progress to cover industrial tests as well as statics and dynamics of robots, dynamic modelling, and industrial control strategies. By the end of the module, you’ll be equipped with a solid foundation in robotics and AI, and be empowered with essential theoretical knowledge and practical skills for designing, modelling, and controlling robotic systems.

This is an opportunity for independent study on a topic of your own choice. Working on the project is a major part of your final year of study, taking place in spring and summer terms. It’s a chance for you to conduct in-depth research on a subject that is relevant to your course, helping you to further develop essential skills. 

It will also challenge you to solve problems which involve the critical consideration of engineering and relevant legal, social, ethical and professional issues. It will enable you to develop and practise a professional approach to delivering written and oral presentations. You will be allocated a supervisor who will support you through weekly meetings and other communications.

To help you build the required knowledge and skills you’ll need for a successful engineering project, you’ll attend a series of lectures and workshops. These will cover topics such as design and production techniques; reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS), quality, safety and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC); as well as ethical, environmental and EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) issues.

Finite element analysis (FEA) plays a crucial role in engineering by allowing a detailed examination of industrial components, offering insights into their structural behaviour under different conditions.

You’ll learn about the principles of finite element methods and how to formulate and solve a physical example through this numerical method by identifying the boundary conditions, element types, loading scenarios, etc. Through simulations of real-world industrial cases, FEA enables cost-effective and efficient design optimisation, reducing the necessity for extensive physical prototypes.

This computational tool will enable you to improve the accuracy of predicting stress, strain, and deformation, ensuring that industrial components are engineered with precision and reliability, ultimately optimising performance and durability. Furthermore, you’ll learn about the sources of inaccuracies and errors in finite element analysis, postprocessing approaches and how to critically evaluate the FEA results.

Thermodynamics is the foundation for heat engines, power plants, refrigerators, and many more important inventions that the modern world relies on. In this module, you’ll develop a thorough understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, energy analyses, and the modes of heat transfer.

You’ll learn how to analyse and apply these concepts to practical engineering systems and processes including power generation, refrigeration systems, heat exchangers, and thermal management solutions across various industries.

You’ll discover how to critically evaluate system performance, optimise designs, and propose integrated engineering solutions. The module also incorporates hands-on laboratory experiments and computer simulations to reinforce theoretical learning and cultivate practical skills.

Biomaterials are substances designed to interact with biological systems. They serve various purposes such as assessment, treatment, support, or replacement of tissues, organs, or bodily functions.

The objective of this module is to give you a comprehensive understanding of biomaterials, emphasising their interactions within the biological environment. The module begins by examining the mechanics of materials, covering fundamental concepts such as stress, strain, bending, and shear. You’ll then look at a diverse range of biomaterials and their applications within the human body.

You’ll develop critical thinking skills and apply biomaterial principles to solve complex problems in areas such as the development of human implants. This module gives you a solid foundation in biomaterials, preparing you for careers in research, healthcare, engineering, and beyond.

What sources of renewable energy are there? How are technological developments improving electrical generation and meeting the global rise in demand for clean energy?

After exploring the impact of fossil fuels on our environment, you’ll get an overview of various renewable energy sources and their associated challenges and opportunities. We’ll then focus on some major sources – like solar energy and wind power technologies – in more detail.

You’ll also briefly look at other renewable energy sources such as wave and tidal, hydropower and geothermal and get a brief overview of energy storage. By the end of the module, you’ll have a strong sense of which technologies are being proposed to meet the world's growing demand for green energy.