The Department of Mechanical Engineering provides separate laboratories for the study of aero-thermal-fluid engineering, manufacturing, material science, mechatronics, dynamics and controls, and CAD. A Senior Design Projects Fabrication and Test Laboratory and a machine shop serve the entire department. A personal computer center, open all day, is available for the convenience of students. In the Aero-Thermal-Fluid Laboratory, major experiments involve a refrigeration unit, a water turbine unit, a wind tunnel unit, an air pipe flow unit, a fin heat transfer unit, and a heat exchanger.
The Engineering Materials Laboratory includes extensive facilities for the preparation of specimens for metallographic examination using modern digital imaging analysis system, testing machinery for tension, compression, hardness, impact, fracture, fatigue, stress relaxation, and ultrasound characterization; equipment for heat treatment; as well as videocassette recording and projection devices.
The Mechatronics Laboratory teaches the use of various electromechanical devices, sensors and actuators. The devices include strain gauges, thermocouples, piezoelectric accelerometers, LVDT’s, instruments for signal generation, filtering and amplification, stepper and DC servo motors, linear slides, and assorted electromechanical items (such as solenoids, relays, micro-switches, infrared proximity sensors, piezoelectric buzzers, strobe lights, fans, blowers, etc.). All these devices are controlled by PC-based data acquisition, microcontrollers, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The Dynamics and Control Laboratory contains equipment for static and dynamic rotor balancing, vibration testing, sound level measurement, and several feedback control units for servo- mechanisms, pneumatic-mechanical linkages, and flow-level/ temperature processing.
The Computer Aided Design Laboratory facility has twenty-six Dell Dimension 8200 series computers, a Dell PowerEdge 2500 server, two HP Color LaserJet 4600dn printers, an HP LaserJet 5100 printer, and a wide-screen monitor. The Department also has a Multimedia Distance Learning Facility which includes twenty Pentium PC’s, document camera, LCD projector and whiteboard. In addition, the Department maintains twenty-seven Sun Unix workstations and sixteen Pentium PC’s in its other three computer laboratories. These systems are equipped with mechanism design, mathematics, finite element, boundary element and computer-aided manufacturing software, including PRO-ENGINEER, Solid Works, Think Design, LS-DYNA, ABAQUS, MathCAD, MATLAB, AutoCAD, FLUENT, NASTRAN-4D and MasterCAM.
A modern Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) Laboratory facility contains four CNC machining centers and a computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) system, together with industrial grade robots: two articulate arm types and one SCARA.
Somewhat more specialized laboratories, established to facilitate advanced experimental research work, provide specific concentrations of apparatus and equipment to allow the study of various phenomena in such fields as solid mechanics, composite turbomachinery, environmental and fluid sciences, aero-sciences, and microchip heat transfer engineering.
The modern machine shop is well equipped for fabricating and maintaining all experimental facilities, both undergraduate and research.
