Corporate Solutions
Corporate & Professional Education

Impact Engineering

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The Interdisciplinary Masters of Science Degree in Impact Engineering was developed to meet the needs of people in a variety of industries including:

This program can be delivered at your corporate site in the New England area, at our Worcester campus, or through a blended delivery which includes some distance learning options. 


The Need

There is a need for engineers with a strong fundamental background in impact engineering. Currently, most engineers in the field develop the skills on-the-job resulting in a just-in-time education that frequently contains significant gaps in technical knowledge and experience. There is a need for more rigorous training in impact related fields. Such training would not only benefit the student, but also the research and industrial communities, since it would both improve and standardize the educational background for a very specialized discipline.

The area of impact engineering has been growing steadily and rapidly for the past decade and will become increasingly important in coming years. Impact engineering is already an important aspect of the aerospace, automotive, highway safety, packaging and weapons industries.

Impact engineering overlaps many traditional engineering disciplines such as Engineering Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Biomechanics and Material Science.  The Impact Engineering program is based on a providing an application independent skill set, with potential applications as diverse as tissue mechanics through ballistic impact.  Impact Engineering uses a common suite of theoretical, analytical and experimental tools to solve problems in a variety of industrial applications. Since the techniques used in impact engineering are specialized extensions of more common engineering mechanics techniques, they seldom get the attention they deserve in traditional curricula.

Impact Engineering Graduate Certificate

18 credits (transfer to degree)


Course Descriptions

SCE 527/SME 5327. Impact Strength of Materials

This course provides the student with a basic understanding of the mechanics of impact and contact as well as the behavior of materials subjected to dynamic loadings. Topics will include elastic and plastic stress waves in rods; longitudinal, torsional and flexure waves; shock waves; impulsively loaded beams and plates; impact of rough bodies in three dimensions, impact of bodies with compliance, impact of slender deformable rods, continuum modeling of contact regions and progressive collapse of structures.

SCE 528/SME 5328. Advanced Impact Strength of Materials

This course provides the student with an understanding of the response of materials and structures to subjected impulsive loadings that result in high strain rates and large plastic deformations. Topics will include an introduction to plasticity, the response of materials under high strain rate loadings, material modeling to include rate affects, the response of a variety of materials and structures to particular loadings. The course uses a strength of materials approach to explain impact/contact phenomena. The course will include experiments and demonstrations to illustrate theoretical and numerical results.

SFPE 575. Explosion Protection

Principles of combustion explosions are taught along with explosion hazard and protection applications. Topics include a review of flammability limit concentrations for flammable gases and dusts; thermochemical equilibrium calculations of adiabatic closed-vessel deflagration pressures, and detonation pressures and velocities; pressure development as a function of time for closed vessels and vented enclosures; the current status of explosion suppression technology; and vapor cloud explosion hazards.

SME 533/SCE 524. Finite Element Method and Applications

This course serves as an introduction to the basic theory of the finite element method. Topics covered include matrix structural analysis variation form of differential equations, Ritz and weighted residual approximations, and development of the discretized domain solution. Techniques are developed in detail for the one- and two-dimensional equilibrium problem. Examples focus on elasticity and heat flow with reference to broader applications. Students are supplied microcomputer programs and gain experience in solving real problems. (Prerequisites: Elementary differential equations, solid mechanics and heat flow.)

SCE 590C. Impact Experiments

Students will learn to set up, perform and analyze the data from impact experiments by actually performing seven laboratory experiments in the Structural Mechanics Impact Laboratory. Students will learn how to use standard equipment like high-speed video cameras, accelerometers and displacement transducers and will learn how to process, display and interpret impact experiment data.

SFPE 563. Operations Risk Management

Operations risk management deals with decision making under uncertainty. It is interdisciplinary, drawing upon management science, engineering economy and managerial decision making, along with material from cognitive psychology and sociology. Classic methods from risk assessment and risk evaluation are first covered and then applied, from the perspective of business process improvement, across a broad set of operations management problems. A course project is required to teach skills for integrating diverse sources of information/data (i.e., qualitative and quantitative, subjective and objective) so as to utilize all available evidence when modeling and evaluating risk. Projects are chosen by the students according to their interest and, in the past, have addressed topics in fire protection engineering, environmental management, and project and operations management. (An introductory understanding of probability and statistics is assumed.)

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Last modified: February 07, 2008 11:55:54