Overview

The Department of Mechanical Engineering

The department of mechanical engineering focuses on methods and technology development in future-oriented areas of mechanical engineering. The department is characterized by a professional profiling within the areas of production technology and product development. Prospective topics arise from the claim to make a lasting contribution to the challenges of our society. In accordance with the key areas of the faculty of engineering and the FAU, the department focuses in the following future research areas

  1. Medical technology: In cooperation with the Medical Faculty, processes for the production of modern medical technology and its products such as individually manufactured implants and prostheses are being developed.
  2. Urban Mobility: In the face of increasing urbanization, intelligent, automated and environmentally friendly transport systems and their components are being developed for future transport technology. Focal points of this work are, for example, new mobility concepts, lightweight construction as well as resource and energy efficiency.
  3. Production technology: As part of »Industry 4.0«, new intelligent and flexible mechatronic production processes and processes in general are being developed, for example through additive manufacturing.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering (MB) was established in 1982 as the “Institute of Manufacturing Technology” and has since developed rapidly into a nationally and internationally renowned research institution and a highly qualified partner for companies interested in technological expertise and knowledge transfer. Currenty, the department consists of 11 institutes and about 400 members of staff and supervises more than 3 000 students.

The amount of research funding raised has been steadily increasing in recent years, so that around 20 million € in third-party funding are raised annually. The department’s exceptional performance and international visibility are also demonstrated by the department’s participation in excellence programs such as the “Engineering of Advanced Materials Excellence Cluster” and the spokespersonship of the “Graduate School of Advanced Optical Technologies”, as well as by its participation in the research association SFB/TRR 285 “Development of methods for mechanical joining in adaptable process chains”. In the field of technical mechanics, the DFG graduate school “Cross-scale fracture processes: Integration of mechanics, materials science, mathematics, chemistry and physics (FRASCAL)” and the ERC grant “Configurational Mechanics of Soft Materials: Revolutionising Geometrically Nonlinear Fracture: SoftFrac” were acquired, among others.

In the field of teaching, the department offers the degree program Mechanical Engineering and coordinates the interdisciplinary and international degree programs Industrial Engineering, Mechatronics, International Production Engineering and Management and e-mobility-ACES with more than  3 000 students altogether.