Mechanical Engineering with Placement Year

Mechanical engineers use their skills in almost every industry, and you’ll find their expertise in nearly everything you see and use in everyday life. They design and develop products, systems and machinery to tackle all sorts of challenges, from renewable energy to household appliances, from robotics to manufacturing equipment, from aerospace components to healthcare solutions. As a mechanical engineer you get to use your creativity to design and develop products and systems, build prototypes, analyse and test until you find your solution.

Throughout your career you will frequently work across teams of engineers from other branches of the discipline, so it’s crucial to have a broad understanding of general engineering and its applications. At Lancaster, your first year is dedicated to exactly this, and you’ll share this experience with all our School of Engineering students, regardless of their specialisation. We think this makes you a well-rounded graduate, with excellent teamwork and communications skills, prepared for your future career.

What to expect
This degree starts with your general engineering first year and includes core themes of design, materials, manufacturing, thermodynamics and heat transfer, along with mathematics.

In Year 2 is where you start to specialise in mechanical engineering and you will learn core themes such as the science of materials, mechanics, fluids and thermodynamics, and also machine design and control, which includes the opportunity to apply these principles to applications like mobile robotics.Working in our two new engineering buildings with state-of-the-art facilities, you’ll develop your creativity and technical skills as you design, build and test to solve real-world problems.

In your final year you will undertake an extended individual project which gives you the opportunity to conduct research and pursue your interests in an engineering application of your choosing. Students tell us this is one of the academic highlights of their time here. They’ve tackled things like wind turbines design and control, hydrogen production for zero carbon transport, novel inspection robots for monitoring nuclear sites, laser additive manufacturing of high-performance coating, and much more. Alongside your project work you will study themes such as dynamic systems, computer aided engineering and product design.

Your placement
In Year 3, you will undertake a year in industry that will enable you to apply the knowledge and skills learnt so far and gain invaluable experience. We have extensive links built through our leadership in research and have students undergoing placements with multinational corporate companies to smaller specialist SMEs. Once you have completed your placement, you will write an extended reflective piece about your time spent with the company.

Personal Development
You will develop valuable transferable skills that make you highly desirable to future employers, such as working in collaboration, communication, and the ability to design, build, and implement a system or device. You will grow practical skills in diagnosis and testing, system maintenance, digital proficiencies, and the ability to consider and maintain work safety practices in a range of environments. With a year’s experience added to your CV, you will be a standout graduate.

3 things our mechanical engineering students would like you to know:

• The multi-disciplinary first year is brilliant for future careers when project work will include colleagues from other engineering specialisms

• Each year of engineering has been better than the previous one, and you build up more independence as you go. From first year introductory labs, all the way to your very own project, research and supervisor

• All of us engineers share the same newly built facilities. We have access to the labs and maker spaces a lot of the time for both personal and academic use