Automotive Engineering Option - Mechanical Engineering

Modern automotive engineering entails the design of engines and automotive components such as braking, powertrain systems, vehicle dynamics, lighting systems, transmission, and fuel economy. The automotive engineering option offers specialized advanced electives that provide a comprehensive understanding of automotive design and manufacturing, vehicle power plants, dynamics, control systems, and more. This option is part of the mechanical engineering BS degree.

Automotive Engineering Courses

The automotive engineering option begins with a course sequence that starts in the third year of your mechanical engineering program. This ensures that you have developed the foundational mechanical engineering skills needed for specialization in more advanced course work that focuses on the principles and dynamics of automotive engineering. Automotive engineering courses include an introductory course (Contemporary Issues in Automotive Engineering) followed by courses in areas such as strength of materials, thermodynamics, internal combustion engines, powertrain systems and design, vehicle dynamics, manufacturing processes, and sustainable energy for transportation.

Multidisciplinary Senior Design

Multidisciplinary Senior Design is a two-course sequence in your final year of study. It's a capstone learning experience that integrates engineering theory, principles, and processes within a collaborative team environment. Multidisciplinary student teams follow an engineering design process, which includes assessing customer needs, developing engineering specifications, generating and evaluating concepts, choosing an approach, completing systems and subsystems designs, and implementing the design to the extent feasible, for example by building and testing a prototype or implementing a chosen set of improvements to a process. You'll apply the knowledge you have learned in the classroom and from your co-op experiences to this design project. Students in the automotive engineering option are expected to work on a design project that focuses on solving or advancing an aspect of automotive engineering.