Mechanical Engineering

• Introduction
• Course outline
• Research Projects
• Facilities
• Career opportunities

Introduction
Mechanical Engineering is the application of physical science to practical problem solving. On a mechanical engineering degree you will learn how parts, machines or systems work and how to design and analyse them. You could work on a car engine, a jet engine, a power station or even a simple machine, such as a kettle or a toaster.

The first two years of the programmes include courses fundamental to all branches of engineering and provide an insight into process engineering, design and computing. Training in workshop practice, an essential requirement for accreditation, is provided via a field course at a local college of technology; these subjects are developed further in design courses, which feature strongly in the second and third years. You will specialise in mechanical engineering by studying control systems, structural dynamics, internal combustion engines, design and manufacture, and more advanced courses in fluid mechanics, heat transfer and thermodynamics. In the third year you will undertake an individual project, which may be a detailed design study, an experimental and/or theoretical investigation, or a critical review of a topic in mechanical engineering of mutual interest to you and your supervisor.

The first three years of the four-year MEng programme are common to the BEng programme, which forms a base for further specialisation in mechanical engineering. In the four-year MEng programme you undertake a group design project, which emphasises the benefits of teamwork; this project will be linked to industry. You will learn to work as a team and allocate work and responsibilities to team members, as well as developing an industrial link and gaining experience to add to your CV. In this project you will develop many transferable skills, learn to study independently and will have the responsibility for the overall management of the project including its finances. Examples of recent projects include the development of a formula student racing car, and the testing of a combustor from a microgas turbine in collaboration with the graduate training programme at Rolls Royce.

The Mechanical Engineering degree programmes are accredited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), and students are entitled to become graduate members of IMechE on graduation. Enrolment as a student member of the IMechE is also encouraged.

Course outline

Research Projects

• Experimental investigation of enhanced condensation heat transfer using three dimensional pin fin tubes

Finned tubes have long been used in heat transfer equipment to enhance heat transfer coefficients, primarily by increasing surface area. In condensation heat transfer however, the situation is complicated by the effects of surface tension on the condensate film forming on the tubes. At Queen Mary's Department of Engineering a simple but accurate model has been developed for condensation heat transfer on simple finned tubes. Recently however, a number of complex, three-dimensional finned tubes have come on the market aimed at further increasing heat transfer efficiency. As yet no detailed study on the performance of such tubes has been carried out. The present project will involve a systematic experimental investigation of condensation heat transfer on three-dimensional finned tubes. This will involve the use of a purpose built experimental rig, which has been used in the past to investigate other aspects of condensation heat transfer. The data will be used to extend the Queen Mary model to three-dimensional finned tubes.

• Component design study for a Formula Student single-seat racing car

The department of Engineering at Queen Mary, is currently running a fourth year MEng group project aimed at designing and building a single-seat racing car for entry into the Formula Student design competition sponsored by the IMechE. An engine for the car is currently installed on a test bed in the IC engines lab undergoing performance testing. Designs for other components of the racing car are progressing and it is planned to continue the project over a several years resulting in the construction of a working vehicle for entry into the competition. In the present project the student will undertake a detailed investigation of one component of the proposed design to be decided between the student and the supervisor. The project will be of particular interest to, but is not limited to, third year MEng students who are interested in pursuing the FORTUNA group project in their final year.

• Swing-up control of a pendulum

The control of pendulums is one of the benchmark problems in control engineering. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for swinging up a pendulum from its stable downward hanging position to its unstable upward standing position. In this project, the student is first required to investigate the different methods for swing-up control of a pendulum, and then design a controller that achieves this task.

• Literature review of methods for swing-up control of pendulums:

Design of energy-based controller that swings up a pendulum from its downward hanging position to near its upward standing position

• Design of a controller that stabilises the upward standing position

Concatenation of both controllers, and simulation tests of the controller using MATLAB/Simulink.

• Fault Tolerant Control of a tank system

In the area of Fault Tolerant Control, one tries to design controllers that still achieve the control goals in the presence of faults in the system. In this project, a coupled two-tank system will be considered, where liquid is being pumped into the first tank and the control objective is to achieve a constant outflow out of the second tank. A controller is to be designed that achieves this goal, even if faults in the form of leaks in the tanks are present.

• Computer simulation of flow in internal combustion engines

The unsteady flow in an idealised 2-D engine configuration will be simulated using STAR-CD. The configuration involves moving piston and moving valves, which requires advanced techniques for generating the computational mesh. The STAR-CD provides such a technique but other techniques will be surveyed and compared. Time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations will be solved to give the flowfield quantities, which will be analysed using fundamental knowledge obtained from various courses on fluid mechanics and I.C. engines.

• Design of a semi-active suspension system

The task of suspension systems in cars is to enhance the comfort of driver and passengers, and to improve the road handling qualities of the car. Typically, a suspension system consists of a spring and a damper. The passive suspension systems that are present in most cars have been tuned for average road conditions, which means that they may not work too well in extreme situations. To partly overcome this problem, semi-active suspension systems have been proposed. In these systems, the damping is varied depending on the measured road conditions. The objective of this project is to give a literature overview of different methods to design a semi-active suspension system, and to design and test a semi-active system for a simplified quarter-car model.

• Parametric modelling of a twin rotor multi-input-multi-output system (TRMS)

TRMS is developed for control experiments by Feedback instrument Ltd. It has got two degrees of freedom. Although, the TRMS does not fly, it has a striking similarity with a helicopter, such as system nonlinearities and cross-coupled modes. Therefore, the TRMS can be perceived as an unconventional and complex "air vehicle" that poses formidable challenges in modelling, control design and analysis and implementation. System identification is one of the fundamental prerequisites for the development of controllers for such system. This project will investigate into the development of identification mechanism for a TRMS using various model structures aforesaid. Comparative performance assessment in terms of input output mapping and correlation tests of the various identified models of the system would also be carried out.

• Application of the FLUENT computational fluid dynamics package to condensation heat transfer

The use of commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics packages such as FLUENT is now widespread in the design of industrial heat transfer equipment. To date however the treatment of two-phase flow such as condensation and boiling in these packages has been based on experimentally derived correlations of dubious reliability. In Queen Mary's Department of Engineering a long-term research project has concentrated on fundamental aspects of condensation heat transfer and their application to the design of industrial condensers. In the present project the student will combine this fundamental approach with the commercially available FLUENT package in order to better understand the fluid dynamics and heat transfer in industrial scale condensers.

• Computer simulation of flow with liquid sprays

Liquid sprays are used in many industrial devices, notably Diesel engines. The interaction between sprays and flow, typically with turbulence is a complicated process. With advanced numerical techniques as offered by STAR-CD, such a process can be simulated by solving the relevant conservation equations. The computational results, in terms of field quantities, are very useful in understanding the phenomena and providing guidance for designers of spray systems. In addition to the computer simulation, a critical survey of spray models in the literature will be conducted.

• Soot/Nox trade-off - methods of breaking the link

The objective of the project is to find the most suitable method of influencing this unwelcome trade-off.

The student should start off with a literature survey and then move towards the design of a suitable experiment, which would ultimately be possible to performing the IC Engine Lab. on one of the engine test beds.

• Biofuelled diesel engine

The student should enable a single-cylinder diesel engine to be operated on biofuels, which could include natural gas. The student will start off by doing a survey of existing work and develop a methodology for introducing aspirated natural gas into the air intake of the diesel engine together with pilot ignition by means of vegetable oil. This will involve the student undertaking a survey of past work, designing the equipment and testing the design.

Facilities

Laboratory facilities

The Department of Engineering has excellent laboratories including structures and materials test facilities, tissue engineering facilities, biomechanical assessment facility, heat transfer rigs, high and low speed wind tunnels. The Engines Laboratory contains a range of petrol, diesel and variable compression engines with exhaust gas instrumentation and computerised data acquisition, together with a gas turbine. The Thermodynamics Laboratory contains seven different experimental rigs to investigate the performance of heat pumps, compressors, gas combustion etc. The Department has 11 wind tunnels. The fastest of these deals with the effects of supersonic flow and is clearly the province of the aerospace engineering students. The other wind tunnels have much wider applications and can, for example, be used to examine the aerodynamic characteristics of a racing car or a bobsleigh. The tissue and biomechanical assessment facilities have recently been developed and provide some of the best facilities in the country. Within these facilities, it is possible to undertake activities as far ranging as the analysis of human movement performance as well as individual living cells.

Computer facilities

Sophisticated software is increasingly used to solve engineering design problems and our students have access to industry standard packages. These are supported by more than 350 personal computers and a range of UNIX workstations, dedicated data gathering and analysis computers and a multi-processor computer cluster.

Career opportunities
Career prospects are excellent for students graduating with a degree in Engineering from Queen Mary, University of London. The thorough grounding in basic engineering coupled with other subjects, provides graduates with considerable employment and career flexibility. As an engineer you will develop numerous transferable skills, which include computer literacy, numerical skills and problem solving capabilities, which will be of huge value whatever career path you choose to take. There are opportunities for well qualified engineering graduates within small and medium sized industries.

Overall employment prospects for Engineers are extremely good, with more than 98 per cent employed six months after graduation. Recent graduates who have started work in the Engineering industry started on annual salaries in the region of £19,000. You might expect, as a successful Engineer to be earning £30,000 to £35,000 between five and ten years after graduation.