RIT - Department of Mechanical Engineering | Undergraduate Programs | BS in Mechanical Engineering / Aerospace Option

BS in Mechanical Engineering / Aerospace Option

The mechanical engineering program offers professional electives that allow you to tailor your curriculum to your career aspirations. The aerospace engineering concentration begins in your fourth year and focuses on engineering aspects of airborne vehicles and spacecraft. You’ll take an introductory course in aerospace engineering followed by elective courses from a wide range of fields such as aerodynamics, aero-structures, composite materials, propulsion, flight dynamics and orbital mechanics. For your capstone senior design project, you are expected to work on an aerospace engineering project. Students interested in airborne vehicles often participate in our Aero Design Team.

The Aero Design Club is a very active student organization in the ME department, that welcomes members from all across campus. The club engages in several side projects in addition to their competitions. The RIT Aero Design and the RIT Imaging Science Club collaborated on the construction of a large model aircraft capable of carrying a variety of payloads. Its primary purpose was to provide a platform for taking aerial video footage for both in-flight and ground shots. The plane was outfitted with GPS equipment and the appropriate hardware to allow over-the-horizon flight. The RIT Blimp can be seen at Tiger Hockey Games entertaining the crowd between periods. Sometimes it seems entertaining entails crashing into the ice or the crowd itself, but that is beside the point. A project led by our friends at the Imaging Science Club, the blimp is approximately 10 feet long and has tri-axis control for easy maneuverability. The blimp broadcasts live aerial footage via the RIT Student Government Channel. The air currents in a packed ice arena make piloting the blimp a bit of a challenge, especially with several pounds of imaging and transmitter equipment strapped aboard. Look for it at RIT Tiger Hockey Games near you! In order to support the newer competition planes, it became necessary to create some custom lightweight, low-power electronics systems. Check out the photo gallery for the Aero Design Club here.

The image shown here was taken from a high altitude balloon flight as part of the recent METEOR project that was under taken by several students and faculty members in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. You may wish to down-load an in-flight video taken from one of our student team's high altitude balloon launches or the ground station video used to track the flight progress. Meteor was a hands-on, multi-phase, multi-disciplinary, teaching and research program for investigation and developing micro-systems engineering, science, and technologies for the exploration of outer space. This project provided the students and faculty at RIT to investigate a wide range of space systems engineering issues within a set of realistic engineering constraints, while promoting multi-disicplinary collaboration opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. A hybrid fuel rocket engine test video is available here. These engine tests are conducted in the rocket engine test bunker located on the RIT campus.

Aerospace Option Requirements

All Aero Option students must complete the free elective:

(4 cr) 0304-560 Intro to Aerospace Engineering, AND

All Aero Option students must complete:

(4 cr) 0304-575 Aerodynamics in place of 0304-550 Transport, AND

All Aerospace Option Students must select at least 3 courses from the list of Aerospace Option Technical Electives (advanced students may petition to enroll in graduate level 7xx/8xx courses as well):

(4 cr) 0304-644 Composite Materials,

(4 cr) 0304-671 Aerostructures,

(4 cr) 0304-678 Propulsion,

(4 cr) 0304-682 Flight Dynamics,

(4 cr) 0304-683 Orbital Mechanics.

(4 cr) 0304-754 Fundamentals of Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics,

(4 cr) 0304-875 Advanced Aerodynamics, AND

An approved Senior Design Project.