About this site
This is the official web site of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME).
AME is a department within the College of Engineering at The University of Arizona (UA).
We are located in the City of Tucson, in the State of Arizona, in the USA.
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General Information
The AME Department offers ABET accredited undergraduate programs in aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering. AME also offers graduate programs leading to the MS and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering. The Department has a strong presence in the Applied Mathematics and Bio-medical Engineering interdisciplinary programs.
Research activities are concentrated in fluid mechanics and aerodynamics, multi-body dynamics and control, heat transfer, solid mechanics and composite materials, space technology, biomedical engineering and reliability. Some of the emerging areas of concentration include micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS), nano-technology and opto-mechanics.
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Faculty
The AME faculty is composed of 15 full Professors, 3 Associate Professors, 6 Assistant Professors, 7 Adjunct Faculty at various levels, 9 Research Faculty at various levels and a large slate of Professors Emeriti.
Of these, there are members of the National Academy of Engineering, ASME fellows, AIAA fellows, Presidential Young Investigator Recipients (now the CAREER Award) and members of the National Academy of Science. Other fellowship honors are awarded by the American Physical Society and the American Society of Quality.
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Undergraduate Study
The undergraduate student body is composed of over 700 students.
Aerospace engineering is concerned with solving the problems of flight and space exploration. The program places special emphasis on the design of aircraft, rockets, satellites and spacecraft. Mechanical engineering is a broad discipline that covers the fields of solid and fluid mechanics, thermo-sciences, dynamics and control, and engineering design. Basic studies are devoted to such subjects as fluid flow, machine dynamics, energy and power systems, mechanical properties of materials, and instrumentation. The capstone of the programs is a senior design project. Class-room education is augmented by participation in research projects, laboratory experiments, hands-on activities and design projects.
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Senior Design Project
For the aerospace senior design project, each team of students generates and realizes the design of an aircraft. Individuals are responsible for particular aspects of the design, such as lift and control surfaces, propulsion, control, and fuselage design.
For the mechanical senior design project, teams of students generate and realize designs to solve problems that are posed by local industry, research faculty, or the students themselves. Companies of all sizes are encouraged to propose or fund projects. Recent mechanical design projects include: Automated Paddle Deflashing Machine, Rocket Fin Locking Device, Bearing Auto-swaging Device and Glass Coverslip Assembler sponsored, respectively, by Precision Shooting Equipment, Raytheon, Sargent Controls and Ventana Medical Systems.
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Graduate Study
The graduate student body is composed of over 100 students, about half of whom are MS students and half of whom are PhD students. Degrees are awarded in aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering.
For admission, students must have maintained a grade point of 'B+" or better in all previous university-level work. GRE scores are expected to be within the top 25th percentile on Quantitative and Analytical Parts.
MS students may opt to defend a formal thesis, write a research report or take the course work option. PhD students are required to defend a dissertation based on original, creative and leading-edge research.
The department is developing a new web-based (distance learning) Master of Engineering program in collaboration with Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. This program allows students employed in industry to take courses, and requires that they work on a design or research project in cooperation with an industrial sponsor.
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Facilities
The AME building is a world class facility housing state-of-the art teaching and research laboratories over a total of approximately 90,000 square feet of net assignable space (out of 135,000 square feet of gross area). Built and furnished at a cost of approximately $28 million, the facility was opened for teaching and research use in the spring of 1997.
The building features a wide array of facilities. Specifically, there is a large auditorium with state-of-the-art audio-visual capabilities; two undergraduate and one graduate computer laboratories with modern networked workstations; several high-bay labs housing wind-tunnels and equipment for large experiments; a controls laboratory; a mechanisms laboratory; a thermo sciences laboratory; a machine and electronics shop for manufacturing in-house equipment; and a large design studio where AME's unique capstone design courses are taught and developed.
The building also features some of the best computer networking infrastructure on campus. Specifically, the building's network will be capable of transmitting data at speeds of 100 megabits/second, which will make the AME subnet compatible with the speeds planned for the national information superhighway.
On the research side, the building emphasizes the traditional strengths of the department in aerospace engineering with high-bay laboratories for research in fluid dynamics and hydrodynamics. In particular these laboratories will include several subsonic wind-tunnels, a supersonic wind-tunnel, water-tunnels and an anechoic chamber.
In addition, the building houses laboratories and equipment that will enable AME to engage in interdisciplinary research and critical emerging technologies. Facilities designed with this goal in mind include laboratories for bioengineering, micro-electro mechanical systems, vehicle dynamics, space technologies, aerostructures, fracture mechanics, composites, laser processing, electronics packaging, advanced computation and personal aviation.
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Research
The Department is active in both fundamental and applied research. Students at all levels (including undergraduates) are involved in research projects, which are coordinated by a faculty advisor. Research activities encompass the following broad areas: Aerospace, Bioengineering, Controls, Dynamics, Micro-Systems (MEMS), Reliability, Solid Mechanics and Thermal/Fluid Science.
Within each of these broad areas there are many projects. Some of the most visible ones include major computational efforts to predict turbulent flows, experiments on the control of separated flows, experimental and computational research on the macro- and micro-properties of composites and other materials, heat transfer in electronic cooling, oxygen generation system for the exploration of Mars, the dynamics and control of multi-body mechanical systems, reliability and bio-mechanics. More recent projects are in micro-electrical-mechanical devices and opto-mechanical research.
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Research Support
Financial support comes from a variety of federal agencies such as the AFOSR, ABS, ARO, DARPA, DOE, FAA, etc. The department cooperates with a number of national laboratories affiliated with the DOC, DOE and NASA. The department maintains close ties with industry, cooperating with companies of all sizes and interests. This includes companies in the aerospace, automotive, electronics, manufacturing, mining, and petroleum industries.
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