FindingANewCareer.co.uk

Engineering Technology - Automotive Engineering Degrees

Engineering covers a multitude of career options and skill levels. If either automotive or aeronautical engineering appeal to you, you're probably the sort of person who enjoys a technical challenge. The United Kingdom boasts a very technically advanced aerospace sector comprising of over six hundred companies turning over more than seventeen billion between them, according to Loughborough University. With regard to the automotive sector Britain also plays a significant role here, with several hundred thousand people being involved in the industry.

Quality Training

Training in the UK is excellent - in fact there are over thirty British universities offering aeronautical engineering based courses alone. Engineering graduates can also choose to take post-graduate qualifications. At a lower level, vocational training can be found up and down the country.

BEng and MEng courses at university usually follow the same structure for the first two years, and then take on a different format for the final year or two. There may also be options for part-time study in some educational establishments. If you're prepared to agree to work for a particular organisation following graduation, you may be able to negotiate a sponsorship deal. It's important to take your time and really explore all the different training possibilities that are available.

The Automotive Industry

This area involves everything to do with the production of motorised vehicles. As well as the traditional disciplines, automotive engineers now need to incorporate electronics, safety and software engineering into their skill-sets. There are many new technologies in the automotive arena, so a great deal to think about for the student who's just getting started.

Let's take a look at the engineering stages we go through in the production of a vehicle. Product or design engineers will first design all the parts and test them to make sure they perform properly. The development engineers' co-ordinate the engineering attributes of vehicles. Designers sometimes need developers to specify criteria for their designs. Determining how to make the automobile is the job of the manufacturing engineers.

Students will find their training is both extensive and intense. Throughout your training you will learn about all three stages of the automotive engineering processes. There are also very strict regulations to be learned and adhered to in safety engineering.

It's one thing for a component or system to work in isolation, but quite another for it to work in harmony with everything else on the vehicle. For that reason, students must understand something about systems engineering. Sometimes systems or components have conflicting aims, and a trade-off has to be made to deliver both satisfactorily. In the end, developers must have carried out sufficient checks and tests to verify that the finished automobile will be street legal and in line with the manufacturers' demands.

Following on from the product and development stages, comes the processes needed for manufacturing. Parts have to be assembled, (usually in separate plants) and vehicles built to the exacting standards of the manufacturing engineers. Safety procedures have to be applied to every stage of manufacture - from design of equipment and layout of people, to machine and line rates and all automated tasks.

Aero Engineering

Our obsession with flight over the years has created this very diverse and exciting branch of engineering. If you are very analytical by nature and have a great capacity for highly technical and innovative thinking, you could do very well building a career for yourself in the aerospace industry. (That said, engineers working in Formula One use aerospace technology too!)

Flight vehicles are faced with huge stresses on take-off, flight and landing. An understanding of technologies such as aerodynamics, materials science, avionics and propulsion is needed, and each are very specialist subjects in their own right.

Aeronautical engineering students will be taught design principles throughout their training, and receive a thorough insight into analytical subjects. Examples of analytical subjects are Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Dynamics.

The behaviour of fluid can now be tested with computerised simulations, reducing the time and expense spent on wind tunnel testing. (Students though will still carry out wind tunnel tests, and engage in experiments using jet engines). Group ventures are important when learning engineering skills. All academic programmes will involve a mixture of group and individual assignments to design and build actual machines or components.

Undergraduate engineering training programmes also provide other useful skill-sets for their students. Employers often expect graduate entrants to have additional soft skills when they get into industry.

Highly skilled engineering professionals can pursue a variety of extremely rewarding career opportunities that involve leading-edge technology. Graduates and Post-graduates can gain professional recognition as Incorporated Engineers or Chartered Engineers.