Part IA

Structural Design Test

All students take the same four examinations at the end of their first year:

Mechanical Engineering
is subdivided into three segments: Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Linear Systems and Vibrations.

Mechanics
deals with the response of a mechanical system to imposed forces or displacements. Some subtlety is required in the application of Newton's Laws of Motion, even to the behaviour of engineering components which can be idealised as particles or rigid bodies. Topics include the application of the principles of momentum and energy conservation to a wide range of mechanical systems and analysis of the motion of machine components.

Thermodynamics
is concerned with the interrelationships between heat, work and energy. The course discusses both idealised and real power plants and includes a study of the internal processes (e.g. heat transfer, fluid phase change) as well as overall performance.

Linear systems and vibrations
deals with the deduction of the behaviour of a system from the mathematical description of its components and their connection. such essential concepts as frequency and impulse response are introduced. Free and forced oscillations of mechanical and electrical systems are discussed.

Structural Mechanics
is concerned with the behaviour of structures used in a wide range of engineering applications: it examines the loading of structure, their behaviour under load, and their failure. The first-year curse, which is conducted in the context of design, is concerned mainly with the statical equilibrium of bodies and assemblies in general and the elastic behaviour of trusses and beams in particular.

Materials
is concerned with the mechanical and electrical properties of solids, derived from the fundamental principles of physics, measured in standard tests, and applied in engineering design. Stiffness, strength and ductility are related to atomic structure. Other aspects of material behaviour which are introduced include creep, fatigue and brittle fracture, friction and corrosion. the attributes (including cost) of metals, ceramics, polymers and composites are compared for various engineering applications.

Electrical and Information Engineering covers three areas:
Linear Circuits and Devices, digital Circuits and Electromagnetism.
Linear Circuits and Devices
are concerned with the way in which simple electronic devices and their associated electrical circuits work. It includes the steady, transient and harmonic response of circuits and the solution of networks. the characteristics of field-effect transistors are explained in principle, and the application to amplifier circuits of various specifications.

Digital Circuits
recognizes that `Information' is now often communicated as electrical impulses. The operation of logic circuits is developed and discussion of shift registers, counters and the use of memory leads into an account of microprocessors and computers.

Electromagnetism
introduces fundamental concepts so that students will understand the principles underlying modern electrical communications, devices and machinery.

Mathematical Methods
in the first year covers some of the basic techniques required early on in the course. In engineering mathematics is seen as a language and tool for describing physical phenomena and for predicting physical behaviour, rather than as an intellectual study in its own right. topics include vectors, complex number, differential equations and linear algebra.

A first-year lecture

A typical timetable for a first-year student in the third week of the Lent term: 

	|9-10			|10-11			|11-12			|12-1			|P.M.
Mon	|	Report making Session			|Thermodynamics		|Digital Electronics	|5-6 College supervision
Tue	|Mathematics		|Structural Mechanics	|	EXPERIMENT:  GAS ENGINE			|
Wed	|Digital electronics	|Engineering apps.	|Examples class		|Thermodynamics		|
Thu	|Mathematics		|Linear systems & vib.	|EXPERIMENT:  INTEGRATED CIRCUIT AMPLIFIER	|5-6 College supervision
Fri	| 		MECHANICAL DRAWING		|Structural mechanics	|Design			|2-4 FINISH DRAWING
Part IA Coursework
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