Department of Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Systems

Areas in Mechanical Systems:

  • Machine Design (CAD)
  • Manufacturing and Materials
  • System Dynamics, Controls, and Robotics

Machine Design (CAD)

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University offers an expanding program in the field of computer integrated design and manufacturing and has three facilities for this purpose: the Engel Laboratory, the Visualization Laboratory, and the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology.

Primary objectives include integrating design and manufacturing, and specifically, supporting research and teaching in computer-aided engineering (CAE), design (CAD), and manufacturing (CAM).

To foster teaching and research in computer integrated design and manufacturing, faculty perform research and teaching with funding from national, state, and private agencies.

Their research concentrates on adapting and integrating traditional/new engineering methods and artificial intelligence-based techniques to create a truly "intelligent" manufacturing environment.

Computer-integrated manufacturing brings together many different disciplines such as design, manufacturing, robotics, and control. To help define and understand the role of manufacturing in design, department researchers are developing a new generation of design systems.

These systems will raise the level of abstraction so the designer can design in terms of manufacturing primitives rather than geometric primitives. Such a design system will contain a set of expert modules to capture manufacturing knowledge in order to automate the fabrication of the product.

Efforts are involved in developing automated, robot-welding program generation systems based on object-oriented programming techniques. Fundamental and application-driven research is being carried out on a wide range of topics from vision-aided robotic welding to developing torque sensors and other transducers used for automated robotic assembly.

Efforts are also concentrated on new technologies to manufacture a wide variety of quality products in a timely and cost-effective response to market requirements to meet global competitiveness.

Rapid prototyping is one such technology where computer models of geometric shapes are transformed into prototypes in a very short time without the use of traditional tooling.

Successful research efforts are in the areas of developing new CAD interfaces based on precise underlying information in the modeling system instead of the traditional approximated data and a fabrication technique to prototype metal parts directly.

This robust prototyping system will reduce the cost and time tremendously by producing functional prototypes for concepts and design evaluation.

Research Labs:

Faculty Members:

 

Manufacturing and Materials

The Materials and Manufacturing Group consists of faculty specializing in material characterization, mechanical behavior, manufacturing processes, and manufacturing considerations in design.

Understanding the microstructure and mechanical behavior of materials under different stimuli (e.g., mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic , etc.) and harnessing their responses to realize useful products is the focus of this group.

Mechanics, fluid flow and heat transfer principles are used to understand the material and manufacturing process characteristics and in turn understand the fundamental natures of different responses.

Specific application areas include traditional macro-scale manufacturing processes, non-traditional processes such as laser processing, solid freeform fabrication, micromachining, micro- and nano-tribology, and novel nano-scale surface modification processes.

Research Labs:

  • Tribology Lab
  • Acoustics Lab
  • Vibrations Lab

Faculty Members:

 

System Dynamics, Controls, and Robotics

Research Labs:

  • Controls Research Lab
  • Laboratory for Advanced Robotics and Computer Control (LARCC )

Faculty Members: