Future Mechanical Engineering Domains

[Simas]

Hi,

Which technology specializations within the mechanical engineering domain will be most demanded in the future?

(I am looking for different technologies rather than for applications enabled by the technology. For example not 'robotics', but rather the technologies used for robotics)

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

[gmax137]

Probably the same specializations most demanded today (in no particular order):
materials
mechanism design
structural design
thermodynamics
fluid dynamics
etc.

 

[klotza]

Complex fluids is (are?) an area of physics research that is slowly morphing into the engineering domain. Sometimes this is known as rheology, but the study of complex fluids is a bit broader. There are a lot of nontrivial fluid mechanics that go into figuring out how thing like polymer solutions and colloidal materials work, not to mention the extremely applied problem of how to get oil out of the ground. Have a look at the Garreth McKinley group at MIT Mechanical Engineering, they do a lot of experimental and theoretical work on complex fluids, things like reducing the drag on ships by dumping polymer solution into the water in front of them, identifying turbulence transitions in non-Newtonian fluids, etc.

 

[Simas]

Complex fluids is (are?) an area of physics research that is slowly morphing into the engineering domain. Sometimes this is known as rheology, but the study of complex fluids is a bit broader. There are a lot of nontrivial fluid mechanics that go into figuring out how thing like polymer solutions and colloidal materials work, not to mention the extremely applied problem of how to get oil out of the ground. Have a look at the Garreth McKinley group at MIT Mechanical Engineering, they do a lot of experimental and theoretical work on complex fluids, things like reducing the drag on ships by dumping polymer solution into the water in front of them, identifying turbulence transitions in non-Newtonian fluids, etc.

Hi Klotza,
Thanks a lot for your insight!

 

[Simas]

Probably the same specializations most demanded today (in no particular order):
materials
mechanism design
structural design
thermodynamics
fluid dynamics
etc.

Hi gmax137,

Thank you for your reply. Do you maybe have an idea of which areas within mechanism design or structural design will be most demanded and which areas would rather be automated?
(I expect that a big portion of structural and mechanism design could be automated with for example topology optimization algorithms)

 

[Dr. Courtney]

"Most demanded" is really a market question about the future, so I won't claim to have any special insight.

Biomechanics has been growing steadily over the past few decades, and the subfield of injury biomechanics even moreso.

 

[gmax137]

I think the creative parts of the process will be most demanded. Automated tools will probably become more and more used but you can't hand a blank sheet of paper to the computer and ask it to start designing.