Hello, I’m a senior and when I applied to college declared my major as mechanical engineering. I’ve always wanted to work in aerospace so I figured I would be an ME for Boeing, Marvin, etc. In aerospace I wanted to design jet/rocket engines. My question: Do mechanical engineers in the aerospace industry do that type of work or do you have to have a degree specifically in aerospace engineering. If they don’t do that kind of work can you please provide examples of things that they do work on in the aerospace industry?
Thanks
You can pretty much do 90% of the jobs in an aerospace company as an ME.
It will help immensely if you have taken any electives in your area of interest. If you haven’t yet and still have time, try to take a compressible flow elective and a propulsion elective.
What’s an example of something that you can’t do? I’m looking toward designing the engines for jets, rockets, missiles, etc.
That sounds like a good idea but I don’t know if my school would have that. If it doesn’t could I still learn more about propulsion and comprehensible flows in the workforce or are engineering companies expecting you to know everything about we aerospace already?
Turbine engines design and manufacturing are done by MEs. Rocket engines are more the domain of MEs than AEs.
There are probably some resources you could use to learn in the workforce but, at least with compressible flows, that is likely to be a topic that they would really prefer that you learned in school. It’s a rather large topic that usually fills up a whole semester.
I’d be surprised if you are in an ME department that doesn’t offer that as a course. Propulsion would be the one that wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t there since that would depend on the faculty at your school. Compressible flow, on the other hand, is important and ubiquitous enough that I would expect any ME department to offer it as an elective.
I worked in the big aerospace world my entire career; things like propulsion systems, the space station, etc. My degree is in Civil Engineering with a specialty in structures. Never worked a day in my career on any civil projects until the last year or two and then it was only on the very edge of the civil world that was utilizing some of the space technology we had. Aerospace companies need all kinds of specialties; structural, materials, loads, thermal, electrical, fluids, systems, industrial; just about anything you can think of. You get hired for what you know and pick up the rest.
You will likely find elective courses in your area of interest that can count towards your degree. They can likely count as technical electives and not just free electives.
This information was great to know thank-you for the advice. I have solidified my decision in mechanical engineering.