Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics

At the graduate level, the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics (AEM) offers programs of study leading to a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics (MSAEM) or a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Our mission is to serve society by educating the next generation of engineers and by creating innovative aerospace and mechanics knowledge to meet the technological challenges of the future.

The AEM department maintains and has access to excellent research laboratories—including wind tunnels, a water tunnel, vacuum chambers, and several structural testing machines—and computing facilities related research. In addition to traditional instrumentation, state-of-the-art equipment such as laser-based diagnostics systems (particle image velocimetry and laser induced fluorescence), are available to support the aerodynamic- and propulsion- and space-related research by the AEM faculty and students. Laboratory facilities for the design, fabrication, and testing of unmanned aerials systems (UASs) are also available as part of the Remote Sensing Center.

The mechanical testing labs are equipped with servo-hydraulic equipment for tensile, compression, torsion, fatigue, creep, and multiaxial high/low temperature testing as well as test cells for induction heating, spot welding, and X-ray inspection. The AEM department also maintains a multi-user composite materials laboratory with equipment for the fabrication and testing of composite materials. Faculty and students in the AEM department have access to the Alabama Materials Institute—a state-of-the-art facility housing a myriad of equipment for microscopy related to materials science and engineering. AEM faculty and students also have access to the Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering’s (SCoE) Cube facility that houses equipment for both additive and subtractive manufacturing and the machine shop—staffed with professional machinists that supports the fabrication of research and student-project hardware.

Computational facilities ranging from PC-based computer laboratories to high performance computing (HPC) facilities are used to support the broad spectrum of computational modeling research being conducted by the AEM faculty and students. Faculty and students in the AEM department have access to The University of Alabama’s High Performance Computing facility (located on the UA campus) and the Alabama Supercomputer Center (a state-run HPC facility that may be used free of charge by researchers at universities across the state of Alabama). In addition, AEM faculty maintain, in their respective laboratories, the specific computational modeling capabilities needed for their research in astrodynamics, computational mechanics, computational fluid mechanics, guidance and navigation, and several other areas related to aerospace engineering and mechanics. 

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