hi I’m a senior graduating within days and I really want to start thinking of some possible futures
i’m going to major in structural engineering
if i wanted to go towards aerospace engineering is this a good major?
what other majors will give you the broad spectrum, because i really want to explore before specifying down to aerospace but still stay a good distance near it.
Aero is good. Mech E is more general and probably gets at least as many hires in the Aero industry.
Structural engineering, a specialty of civil engineering, has no application in the aerospace world. Mechanical is the broadest, and is often preferred over aerospace. You can major in mechanical, taking some aero classes, and have all the undergrad knowledge you need to land an aerospace job. Meanwhile, if the aero path doesn’t work out, the mechanical degree opens other doors.
I think @HPuck35 might dispute that. Deployable structures are pretty cool. Is it structural per se? Not really, but engineering can be parlayed in many ways.
Your right, I will debate that. Structural engineering definitely has a place in aerospace. It was and still is my career, one that has lasted 40 years. Just look at the space station and you can clearly see the truss that runs the length of it. Who do you think sized and analyzed that???
The aerospace world hires all kinds of engineers. In fact, in my 40 years, I’ve worked with only a handful that actually had a degree that said “aerospace” engineering. The majority are mechanical engineers with materials and processing engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers and others with my degree actually in civil engineering.
Mechanical engineering does give you the broadest base for any engineering job. But once you start working, the demands of your career will usually dictate that you specialize in one sub area within mechanical engineering.
Ok, so there are some limited applications for structural engineering in the aerospace world. Not sure how many more space stations will be built, so not sure how much job demand. I think it’s safe to say that someone looking to enter the aerospace field might be better off with a major other than structural.
I’m not an engineer, so just wondering, how strong does a truss need to be in zero gravity?
There may not strictly be a weight being held up but such structures, but in the vacuum of space, everything becomes a pressure vessel, so the structure must be able to hold against the pressure inside. It’s not a trivial problem.
Structures that do not change form from launch to on-orbit are typically sized for the ride up. On-orbit only structures (such as the solar array masts) are super light weight and would collapse under their own weight in a 1g environment. One of the driving design cases for those masts was from the plume loads from the space shuttle approaching the station.
Every satellite you see being launched has a structure to it that has to be analyzed. Even slight changes to the items carried by the satellite will cause the launch dynamic response to change and require a separate analysis.
In the companies I’ve worked for and been associated with a good rule of thumb is that for every 2 hours of design effort there will be 1 hour of structural analysis required. Some times that ratio would get closer to 1 to 1 for more exotic designs. The company I work for now employs about 35 people; from the general manager, program managers, to design, to the structural engineers, to manufacturing, to quality, to the assembly techs. So, of those 35 people, 5 are structural engineers.
Point is, if the OP is interested in doing structural engineering in the aerospace world, there are still plenty of opportunities out there.
The only caution I would see with structural engineering is that different schools offer different specialties, so someone taking a structural degree might or might not see aero-applicable electives available depending on where they are. I doubt that would be a huge problem, but it would certainly make getting an aero job easier if their entire structural focus wasn’t on the civil side.
Given that structural engineering is often a graduate concentration, it would seem to me that you could easily handle that by selecting the right graduate program.
When I was a manager and hiring structural engineers, I hired about equal numbers of BS and MS degreed applicants (with a few PhD’s thrown in). At the BS level, it doesn’t matter so much what department you got your degree in, the background in structural engineering was about at the same level. Civil E applicants would also have some civil code work thrown in but not a lot, they were still trying to master the basic principles mostly. At the grad level, I was starting to look for some more direct experience / class work nearer the type of work (aerospace) that the job was about.