BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
Senior Year in Aerospace Engineering
It's been a long road, but seniors enter their last year having learned an amazing amount of material. Mathematics and physics have become tools they use without hesitation. Topics students discuss have moved beyond course work to areas of applications.
Finding Your Area of Interest and Expertise
Some students have drifted toward aerodynamics while others have drifted toward structures, controls, attitude and control, or space. Every student has found an area or multiple areas that they associate with deeper knowledge. But the senior year is not for the faint of heart. The challenge that students are confronted with is two fold. The first is completing that quest for discipline specific depth. The second focuses all their energy and skill set toward design.
Capstone Design Experience
The most significant part of the senior year is the capstone experience. In the capstone experience student teams design aircraft and spacecraft.
In the first course of the capstone experience, students design entire aircraft or spacecraft looking at performance and cost. In the second course in the series they choose a portion of the design to design in detail, fabricate, and then test.
Engineers from industry come to campus to hear formal briefings much like preliminary design reviews and critical design reviews in industry. Faculty and industry judge these designs to establish how well they have met design requirements, the creativity of their solution space, and the technical rigor that they have used to ensure the functionality, utility, manufacturability, and performance of the design.
Teamwork
The senior year is the time to use the tool set developed over the previous three years and integrate the complexities of structure, propulsion, and control. Typical teams include a propulsion team, structures team, instrument team, and integration team. Students use technical skills from previous classes, learn management methods, and work with students in a fast paced year. Our goal is to mimic industry in this respect. Industry doesn't design an aircraft with one or two people and neither do our students. Teams are essential, as are document protocols, drawing release schedules, critical scheduling paths, finite element simulation, CAD drawings, prototypes, instrumentation plans, and integration strategies. The capstone experience enables students to put themselves in challenging situations and succeed.
Both the Senior Year for the Aeronautics and Astronautics Option are listed below.
Senior Year (Aeronautics Option)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Upper-Level Humanities -OR-Social Sciences* | 3 | |
| Technical Electives | 6 | |
| AE313 | Space Mechanics | 3 |
| AE408 | Turbine and Rocket Engines | 3 |
| AE416 | Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation | 1 |
| AE417 | Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation Laboratory | 1 |
| AE420 | Aircraft Preliminary Design | 4 |
| AE421 | Aircraft Detail Design | 4 |
| AE430 | Control Systems Analysis and Design | 3 |
| MA441 | Advanced Engineering Mathematics I | 3 |
| Total Credits | 31 |
Senior Year (Astronautics Option)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Upper-Level Humanities -OR-Social Sciences* | 3 | |
| Technical Electives | 6 | |
| AE404 | Aircraft Structures II | 3 |
| AE414 | Space Propulsion | 3 |
| AE426 | Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics and Control | 3 |
| AE427 | Spacecraft Preliminary Design | 4 |
| AE430 | Control Systems Analysis and Design | 3 |
| AE445 | Spacecraft Detail Design | 4 |
| AE416 & 417 | Aerospace Structures & Instrumentation | 2 |
| Total Credits | 31 | |
| Total Degree Credits | 129 |
