Department: Mechanical Engineering

Contacts

Office: Building 530, Room 125
Mail Code: 94305-3030
Web Site: http://me.stanford.edu

Courses offered by the Department of Mechanical Engineering are listed under the subject code ME on the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses web site.

The programs in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) emphasize a mix of applied mechanics, biomechanical engineering, computer simulations, design, and energy science and technology. Since mechanical engineering is a broad discipline, the undergraduate program can be a springboard for graduate study in business, law, medicine, political science, and other professions where understanding technology is important. Both undergraduate and graduate programs provide technical background for work in biomechanical engineering, environmental pollution control, ocean engineering, transportation, and other multidisciplinary problems that concern society. In all programs, emphasis is placed on developing systematic procedures for analysis, creating innovative solutions to complex problems, communication of work and ideas, practical and human-centered and aesthetic aspects in design, and responsible use of technology.

Mission of the Undergraduate Program in Mechanical Engineering

The mission of the undergraduate program in Mechanical Engineering is to provide students with a balance of intellectual and practical experiences that enable them to address a variety of societal needs. The curriculum encompasses elements from a wide array of disciplines built around the themes of biomechanical engineering, computational engineering, design, energy, materials, and multiscale engineering. Course work may include mechatronics, computational simulation, solid and fluid dynamics, microelectromechanical systems, biomechanical engineering, energy science and technology, propulsion, sensing and control, nano- and micro-mechanics, and design. The program prepares students for entry-level work as mechanical engineers and for graduate studies in either an engineering discipline or another field where a broad engineering background is useful.

Graduate Programs in Mechanical Engineering

Admission and Financial Assistance

Mechanical engineering is a varied profession, ranging from primarily aesthetic aspects of design to highly technical scientific research. Disciplinary areas of interest to mechanical engineers include biomechanics, energy conversion, fluid mechanics, materials, nuclear reactor engineering, propulsion, rigid and elastic body mechanics, systems engineering, scientific computing, thermodynamics, robotics, and controls, to name a few. Our graduate programs provide advanced depth and breadth in the field.

Graduate degree programs and admission

• Master of Science (M.S.) in Mechanical Engineering

• Master of Science (M.S.) in Engineering — Design Impact

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Mechanical Engineering

To be eligible for admission to graduate study to the department, a student must have a B.S. degree in engineering, physics, or a comparable science program. M.S. and Ph.D. applications must be received by the first Tuesday in December, and admitted students must matriculate in the following Autumn. In rare circumstances, with the support of an ME faculty member who is a potential Ph.D. adviser, Ph.D. applications from students who have completed or are currently in an M.S. program are reviewed for Winter or Spring Quarter start. In addition, M.S. applicants eligible for the Honors Cooperative Program (on-campus courses required for Mechanical Engineering) can apply in Autumn, Winter, or Spring quarters.

Additional degree programs available to currently enrolled students

• Master of Science (M.S.) in Engineering — Biomechanical Engineering

• Master of Science (M.S.) in Engineering — Individually Designed Major

• Engineer in Mechanical Engineering

For additional information about these programs, see the Mechanical Engineering Department Graduate Handbook.

Financial Assistance

The department annually awards, on a competitive basis, a limited number of fellowships, teaching assistantships, and research assistantships to incoming graduate students. For M.S. students, limited financial aid in the form of fellowships and short-term research assistantships are provided at the time of admission, and course assistantships can sometimes be arranged with individual course instructors after admission. All Ph.D. students receive financial support for the duration of their program, given satisfactory degree progress.

Post-Master's Degree Programs

The department offers two post-master’s degrees: Engineer and Doctor of Philosophy. Post-master’s research generally requires some evidence that a student has research potential before a faculty member agrees to supervision and a research assistantship appointment. It is most efficient to carry out preliminary research during the M.S. degree program, if interested in a post-master's degree.

Departmental Groups

The department has five groups: Biomechanical Engineering; Design; Flow Physics and Computation; Mechanics and Computation; and Thermosciences. Each maintains its own labs, shops, and offices.

The Biomechanical Engineering (BME) Group has teaching and research activities which focus primarily on musculoskeletal biomechanics, neuromuscular biomechanics, cardiovascular biomechanics, and rehabilitation engineering. Research in other areas including hearing, ocean, plant, and vision biomechanics exists in collaboration with associated faculty in biology, engineering, and medicine. The group has strong research interactions with the Mechanics and Computation and the Design groups, and the departments of Neurology, Radiology, and Surgery in the School of Medicine.

The Design Group is devoted to the imaginative application of science, technology, and art to the conception, visualization, creation, analysis and realization of useful devices, products, and objects.  Courses and research focus on topics such as bio-inspired design, kinematics, haptics, applied finite elements, micro-electricalmechanical systems (MEMS), medical devices, fatigue and fracture mechanics, dynamics and simulation, rehabilitation, optimization, high-speed devices, product design, vehicle dynamics, experimental mechanics, robotics, creativity, idea visualization, computer-aided design, manufacturing technology, design analysis, and engineering education.

The Flow Physics and Computational Engineering Group (FPCE) The Flow Physics and Computational Engineering Group (FPCE) blends research on flow physics and modeling with algorithm development, scientific computing, and numerical database construction. FPCE is contributing new theories, models and computational tools for accurate engineering design analysis and control of complex flows (including multi phase flows, micro-fluidics, chemical reactions, acoustics, plasmas, interactions with electromagnetic waves and other phenomena) in aerodynamics, propulsion and power systems, materials processing, electronics cooling, environmental engineering, and other areas. A significant emphasis of research is on modeling and analysis of physical phenomena in engineering systems.

The Mechanics and Computational Group covers biomechanics, continuum mechanics, dynamics, experimental and computational mechanics, finite element analysis, fluid dynamics, fracture mechanics, micromechanics, nanotechnology, and simulation based design. Qualified students can work as research project assistants, engaging in thesis research in association with the faculty director and fellow students. Projects include analysis, synthesis, and control of systems; biomechanics; flow dynamics of liquids and gases; fracture and micro-mechanics, vibrations, and nonlinear dynamics; and original theoretical, computational, and experimental investigations in the strength and deformability of elastic and inelastic elements of machines and structures.

The Thermosciences Group conducts experimental and analytical research on both fundamental and applied topics in the general area of thermal and fluid systems. Research strengths include high Reynolds number flows, microfluidics, combustion and reacting flows, multiphase flow and combustion, plasma sciences, gas physics and chemistry, laser diagnostics, microscale heat transfer, convective heat transfer, and energy systems. Research motivation comes from applications including air-breathing and space propulsion, bioanalytical systems, pollution control, electronics fabrication and cooling, stationary and mobile energy systems, biomedical systems, and materials processing. Emphasis is on fundamental experiments leading towards advances in modeling, optimization, and control of complex systems.

Facilities

The department groups maintain modern laboratories that support undergraduate and graduate instruction and graduate research work. A partial listing can be found below. More information is available at the department's Labs and Centers website.

The d’Arbeloff Undergraduate Research and Teaching Lab supports undergraduate research and teaching in the Mechanical Engineering Department. In this unique facility, the department holds undergraduate project-based classes, and offers its students the opportunity to build and collaborate.

The Structures and Composites Laboratory, a joint activity with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, studies structures made of fiber-reinforced composite materials. Equipment for fabricating structural elements includes autoclave, filament winder, and presses. X-ray, ultrasound, and an electron microscope are available for nondestructive testing. The lab also has environmental chambers, a high speed impactor, and mechanical testers. Lab projects include designing composite structures, developing novel manufacturing processes, and evaluating environmental effects on composites.

Experimental facilities are available through the interdepartmental Structures and Solid Mechanics Research Laboratory, which includes an electrohydraulic materials testing system, a vehicle crash simulator, and a shake table for earthquake engineering and related studies, together with highly sophisticated auxiliary instrumentation. Facilities to study the micromechanics of fracture areas are available in the Micromechanics/Fracture Laboratory, and include a computer-controlled materials testing system, a long distance microscope, an atomic force microscope, and other instrumentation. Additional facilities for evaluation of materials are available through the Center for Materials Research, Center for Integrated Circuits, and the Ginzton Laboratory. Laboratories for biological experimentation are accessible through the School of Medicine. Individual accommodation is available for the work of each research student.

Major experimental and computational laboratories engaged in bioengineering work are located in the Biomechanical Engineering Group. Other Biomechanical Engineering Group activities and resources are associated with the Rehabilitation Research and Development Center of the Veterans Administration Palo Alto Health Care System. This major national research center has computational and prototyping facilities. In addition, the Rehabilitation Research and Development Center houses the Electrophysiology Laboratory, Experimental Mechanics Laboratory, Human Motor Control Laboratory, Rehabilitation Device Design Laboratory, and Skeletal Biomechanics Laboratory. These facilities support graduate course work as well as Ph.D. student research activities.

Computational and experimental work is also conducted in various facilities throughout the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine, particularly the Advanced Biomaterials Testing Laboratory of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the Orthopaedic Research Laboratory in the Department of Functional Restoration, and the Vascular Research Laboratory in the Department of Surgery. In collaboration with the School of Medicine, facilities throughout the Stanford Medical Center and the Veterans Administration Palo Alto Health Care System conduct biological and clinical work.

The Design Group has facilities for lab work in experimental stress analysis. Design Group students also have access to the Stanford NanoFabrication Facility (SNF) and characterization facilities at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities (SNSF).

The Automotive Innovation Facility houses the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab (VAIL) which provides a state-of-the-art vehicle research facility and community space where interdisciplinary teams work on projects that move vehicle technology forward by focusing on human-centered mobiling solutions. High-profile Stanford projects accommodated in the building include research on drive-by-wire and drive assistance systems, and the interaction of drivers with vehicles (via the full–scale driving simulator).

The Design Group also maintains the Product Realization Laboratory (PRL), a multi-site teaching facility offering students integrated experiences in market definition, product design, and prototype manufacturing. The PRL provides coaching, design manufacturing tools, and networking opportunities to students interested in product development. The PRL’s Room 36 offerings include laser cutters, 3D printers, sewing machines, and equipment for work with electronics and hotwire foam cutting, The ME 310 Design Project Laboratory has facilities for CAD, assembly, and testing of original designs by master’s students in the engineering design program. The  Smart Product Design Laboratory supports microprocessor application projects. 

The Center for Design Research (CDR) is a unique doctoral-level research community that studies the dynamics of science, engineering, management, and design teams in academic and worldly settings internationally.  This closely knit group studies human/machine interactions from both technology and human performance points of view: why did the robot (autonomous car; surgical robot; instructor) do that? Why is the team doing that? Smart technical systems are never smart enough at the interface with humans and the human environment. Stanford courses, especially ME 310, often serve as laboratories for the researchers.  The CDR collaborates closely with other disciplines and laboratories, especially Computer Science (AI, big data), the behavioral sciences (VR, AR), and the School of Medicine (haptics, neurosciences, fMRI, fNIRS). 

The Nanoscale Prototyping Laboratory addresses fundamental issues on energy conversion and storage at the nanoscale. It employs a wide range of nano-fabrication technologies to build prototype fuel cells and capacitors with induced topological electronic states. It tests these concepts and novel material structures with the help of atomic layer deposition, scanning tunneling microscopy, impedance spectroscopy and other technologies. In addition, it uses atomic scale modeling to gain insights into the nature of charge separation and recombination processes.

The Design Group also maintains The Loft, in which students in  the Design Impact Program develop graduate thesis projects.

The Flow Physics and Computation Group has a 32 processor Origin 2000, 48-node and 85-node Linux cluster with high performance interconnection and an array of powerful workstations for graphics and data analysis. Several software packages are available, including all the major commercial CFD codes. FPC is strongly allied with the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR), a research consortium between Stanford and NASA, and the Center for Integrated Turbulence Simulations (CITS), which is supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) under its Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). The Center for Turbulence Research has direct access to major national computing facilities located at the nearby NASA-Ames Research Center, including massively parallel super computers. The Center for Integrated Turbulence Simulations has access to DOE’s vast supercomputer resources. The intellectual atmosphere of the Flow Physics and Computation Group is greatly enhanced by the interactions among CTR’s and CITS’s postdoctoral researchers and distinguished visiting scientists.

The Mechanics and Computation Group has a Computational Mechanics Laboratory that provides an integrated computational environment for research and research-related education in computational mechanics and scientific computing. The laboratory houses Silicon Graphics, Sun, and HP workstations and servers, including an 8-processor SGI Origin2000 and a 16-processor networked cluster of Intel-architecture workstations for parallel and distributed computing solutions of computationally intensive problems. Software is available on the laboratory machines, including commercial packages for engineering analysis, parametric geometry and meshing, and computational mathematics. The laboratory supports basic research in computational mechanics as well as the development of related applications such as simulation-based design technology.

The Thermosciences Group has four major laboratory facilities. The Heat Transfer and Turbulence Mechanics Laboratory concentrates on fundamental research aimed at understanding and improved prediction of turbulent flows and high performance energy conversion systems. The laboratory includes two general-purpose wind tunnels, a pressurized high Reynolds number tunnel, two supersonic cascade flow facilities, three specialized boundary layer wind tunnels, and several other flow facilities. Extensive diagnostic equipment is available, including multiple particle-image velocimetry and laser-Doppler anemometry systems.

The High Temperature Gas Dynamics Laboratory includes research on sensors, plasma sciences, cool and biomass combustion and gas pollutant formation, and reactive and non-reactive gas dynamics. Research facilities include diagnostic devices for combustion gases, a spray combustion facility, laboratory combustors including a coal combustion facility and supersonic combustion facilities, several advanced laser systems, a variety of plasma facilities, a pulsed detonation facility, and four shock tubes and tunnels. The Thermosciences Group and the Design Group share the Microscale Thermal and Mechanical Characterization laboratory (MTMC). MTMC is dedicated to the measurement of thermal and mechanical properties in thin-film systems, including microfabricated sensors and actuators and integrated circuits, and features a nanosecond scanning laser thermometry facility, a laser interferometer, a near-field optical microscope, and an atomic force microscope. The activities at MTMC are closely linked to those at the Heat Transfer Teaching Laboratory (HTTL), where undergraduate and master’s students use high-resolution probe stations to study thermal phenomena in integrated circuits and thermally-actuated microvalves. HTTL also provides macroscopic experiments in convection and radiative exchange.

The Energy Systems Laboratory is a teaching and research facility dedicated to the study of energy conversion systems. The lab includes three dynamometers for engine testing, a computer-controlled variable engine valve controller, a fuel-cell experimental station, a small rocket testing facility, and a small jet engine thrust stand.

The Guidance and Control Laboratory, a joint activity of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, specializes in construction of electromechanical systems and instrumentation, particularly where high precision is a factor. Work ranges from robotics for manufacturing to feedback control of fuel injection systems for automotive emission control. The faculty and staff work in close cooperation with both the Design and Thermosciences Groups on device development projects of mutual interest.

Many computation facilities are available to department students. Three of the department’s labs are equipped with super-minicomputers. Numerous smaller minicomputers and microcomputers are used in the research and teaching laboratories.

Library facilities at Stanford beyond the general library include Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics department libraries.

Mechanical Engineering Course Catalog Numbering System

The department uses the following course numbering system:

Faculty

Emeriti: (Professors) James L. Adams, Thomas P. Andriacchi, David M. Barnett, Peter Bradshaw, Brian J. Cantwell, Dennis R. Carter, Daniel B. DeBra, Robert H. Eustis, Thomas J. R. Hughes, James P. Johnston, Thomas R. Kane, William M. Kays, Joseph B. Keller, Charles H. Kruger, Robert H. McKim, Robert J. Moffat, M. Godfrey Mungal, J. David Powell, Charles R. Steele*, Douglass J. Wilde; (Professors, Research) Richard M. Christensen, Sidney A. Self, Kenneth J. Waldron*, Felix E. Zajac

Chair: Ellen Kuhl

Director of Graduate Studies: Allison Okamura

Director of Undergraduate Studies: Mark Cappelli

Group Chairs: Mark R. Cutkosky & Sheri D. Sheppard (Design), Marc Levenston (Biomechanical Engineering), Gianluca Iaccarino & Parviz Moin (Flow Physics and Computational Engineering), Wei Cai (Mechanics and Computation), Christopher F. Edwards (Thermosciences)

Professors: Craig T. Bowman, Mark A. Cappelli, Mark R. Cutkosky, John Dabiri, Scott L. Delp, John K. Eaton, Christopher F. Edwards, Charbel Farhat, J. Christian Gerdes, Kenneth E. Goodson, Ronald K. Hanson, Gianluca Iaccarino, David M. Kelley, Thomas W. Kenny, Ellen Kuhl, Larry J. Leifer, Sanjiva K. Lele, Arun Majumdar, Reginald E. Mitchell, Parviz Moin, Drew V. Nelson, Allison M. Okamura, Peter M. Pinsky, Friedrich B. Prinz, Beth L. Pruitt, Bernard Roth, Juan G. Santiago, Eric S. G. Shaqfeh, Sheri D. Sheppard, Hai Wang

Associate Professors: Wei Cai, Steve Collins, Eric F. Darve, W. Matthias Ihme, Marc E. Levenston, Adrian J. Lew, Ali Mani, Xiaolin Zheng

Assistant Professors: Ovijit Chaudhuri, Sean Follmer, Wendy Gu, David Lentink, Erin MacDonald, Sindy K.-Y. Tang

Professor (Teaching): David W. Beach

Courtesy Professors: Oussama Khatib, Paul Yock

Courtesy Associate Professor:  Nicholas Giori, Christian Linder

Courtesy Assistant Professor: David Camarillo, Roseanna Zia

Senior Lecturers: Vadim Khayms, J. Craig Milroy

Adjunct Professors: Mehdi Asheghi, Michael R. Barry, William R. Burnett, J. Edward Carryer, Rainer J. Fasching, Shannon Gilmartin, John A. Howard, Barry M. Katz, Paul Mitiguy, Gary O'Brien, Dev Patnaik, Paul Saffo III, George Toye 

* Recalled to active duty.