Master of Mechanical Engineering

A student in the MSME will initially specialize in the major areas (a) Materials and Mechanics, and (b) Design in this degree program. Additional courses and major areas will be incorporated as needed. Two degree options are available, namely, the report-option and the courses only option.

The following describes the program requirements specific to the report option:

• The report option requires a minimum of 36 hours consisting of 33 hours of coursework and three hours of ME 6301, Master's Report.
•  Nine hours of coursework must be selected from the designated courses in the students' selected major area.
•  At least six hours of coursework must be in the designated breadth areas (breadth areas are areas outside the students' core area, but within ME).
• All Masters Students are required to take 6 hours of advanced mathematics.
• In addition to the core and breadth courses, students must take an additional 12 hours of graduate level coursework designated as graduate free elective. These free electives could be selected from any of the areas inside the ME, other engineering departments, and/or sciences.

The following describes the program requirements specific to the coursework option:

• The coursework option requires a minimum of 36 hours consisting entirely of coursework.
• Nine hours of coursework must be selected from the designated courses in the students' selected major area.
• At least six hours of coursework must be in the designated breadth areas (breadth areas are areas outside the students' core area, but within ME).
• All Masters Students are required to take 6 hours of advanced mathematics.
• In addition to the core and breadth courses, students must take an additional 15 hours of graduate level coursework designated as graduate free elective. These free electives could be selected from any of the areas inside the ME, other engineering departments, and/or sciences.
• The MS coursework only option requires a Comprehensive examination to be administered by an assigned faculty member. The exam will be geared on courses taken by the student toward the student's selected program. Coursework students should check with the Graduate Advisor regarding the format of the exam.

Materials and Mechanics - Major Area Courses1:

• ME 5340 Elasticity

Stress, deformation, and strain; basic equations; analytical solutions; energy principles and principles of virtual displacements; finite element; and solutions of problems with elements of design.

• ME 5342 Fracture and Failure Analysis

Engineering aspects of failure. Failure mechanisms and related environmental factors. Principles of fracture mechanics and fractography. Techniques for failure analysis and prevention.

• ME 5343 Contact Mechanics

Knowledge of material science, engineering mechanics, and MATLAB programming. Introduction and advanced knowledge of surface interactive forces and interface contact mechanics of engineering materials.

• ME 5345 Computational Mechanics

Finite element method for elastic problems, Galerkin weighted residual and variational approaches to numerical solutions of mechanical problems, error estimates and adaptive FE refinement, iterative algorithms for nonlinear problems, static elastoplastic and elastoviscoplastic problems, general purpose finite element codes.

• ME5358 Biomaterials
• ME 6330 Physical Metallurgy
• ME 6330 Mechanics of Nano-materials I
• ME 6330 Nanomanufacturing 

1 Courses may be used as breadth courses if Materials and Mechanics is not selected as major area

Design Major - Major Area Courses 2:

• ME 5351 Advanced Engineering Design

Design analysis and synthesis of multicomponent systems. Application of fatigue, fracture mechanics, random vibration, acoustic and anisotropic materials to component design.

• ME 5352 Probabilistic Design

Application of probabilistic approaches in engineering design. Techniques for the quantification of uncertainty and risk inherent in mechanical systems.

• ME 5356 Digital Human Modeling
• ME 6330 Vehicle Dynamics

Knowledge of kinematics and dynamics, vector and matrix algebra, C programming. Introduction to human anatomy, skeletal model, anthropometry, human modeling packages, kinematics of human multibody system, posture prediction and dynamic motion prediction.

2 Courses may be used as breadth courses if Design is not selected as major area

Advanced Mathematics Courses:

• ME 5301 Analysis of Engineering Systems I

Analytical techniques for solving ordinary and partial differential equations frequently occurring in advanced mechanical engineering.

• ME 5302 Analysis of Engineering Systems II

Numerical analysis of ordinary and partial differential equations and other advanced topics applied to mechanical engineering problems.

• ME 6330 Vehicle Dynamics

Additional Breadth Courses:

All DL graduate courses in ME, additional to those listed under Advanced Mathematics, and Materials and Mechanics, and Design major area courses.

• Masterʼs Report:

ME 6301 Master's Report

For more information on the MS ME distance program: 

Please contact the ME Staff Advisor: 

Rene Fuentes | rene.fuentes@ttu.edu | 806.834.2335