Design Engineering BEng/MEng

Course content

What will you study on the BEng/MEng Design Engineering?

Whether you opt for the BEng Design Engineering or MEng Design Engineering you will build the confidence to develop and implement modern technologies relevant to electronic products and systems, learning to communicate ideas effectively.

Active participation in industry-sponsored live projects help you to gain leadership qualities, management skills and confidence in your work, both on individual and group projects. There is also the option to apply for a placement year between your second and third years.

The MEng Design Engineering honours degree allows you to specialise further and give you the option to study new and emerging areas in Design Engineering. You will demonstrate your advanced skills and mastery of the area by working on a team project in your chosen specialism.

What is the difference between the BEng and MEng course?

There are two honours degree programmes available for each area of study – a three-year Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) and a four-year Master of Engineering (MEng).

Both degrees share a common first year but due to the advanced nature of the MEng programme students must demonstrate they have the high-level knowledge and skills required at the end of year 2 and 3 to progress on the programme.

You must apply direct to either the BEng or the MEng, but you can also choose to change programme. You must apply for the MEng in Year 1 if you want to guarantee your student loan will cover the fourth year of fees.

This module will develop your knowledge and understanding on a range of modelling and prototyping processes and techniques in order for you to successfully complete a number of projects. You will learn to use a range of workshop machinery to accomplish this and the projects will require you to develop and use a variety of problem solving skills and to utilise knowledge gained from other taught modules.

The aim of this module is to develop your knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of electronics. You will develop a range of practical skills, attitudes and techniques required to construct electronic circuits successfully.

This module aims to enable you to write computer programmes in response to a given brief which will respond to and control physical devices and processes.

The aim of this module is to develop your knowledge and understanding of tools and techniques available to support efficient application of mathematics to engineering design.

This module aims to provide the knowledge and skills required to carry out engineering projects and will give you the opportunity to apply them, together with knowledge and skills from other modules, in practical projects.

This module aims to explore and demonstrate the role and responsibilities of engineers in various contexts outside their subject specialism. These would cover issues such as recognising obligations to society, the profession, the environment and commitment to professional standards. The module will also cover other wider issues such as globalisation (global manufacturing, operating in global markets, cultural issues, financial concerns, risk etc) and its impact on business operations.

This module aims to provide you with the knowledge and understanding of control systems and explains the principles of feedback control. The module also develops your ability to analyse techniques for designing and modelling controllers to solve real world problems based on block diagrams and transfer functions, and to use such techniques in the context of engineering design.

The module aims to provide detailed knowledge of analogue and digital electronic theories and their application. In analogue electronics, you will gain analogue electronic design skills such as a range of circuit analysis theorems, principles and applications of transistor and operational amplifiers. In digital electronics, this module equips you with the necessary knowledge of combinational and sequential logic circuits, finite state machines, and FPGA design using VHDL. The module will enable you to design analogue and digital electronic circuits through the use of appropriate methods and software tools.

This module aims to develop your understanding of the concepts and theory of operation that lie behind mechatronic devices and systems. You will gain experiential understanding of the effect that design has on these mechatronic devices through construction, programming, demonstration and analysis. This module will also develop realisable solutions to real world situations and develop your practical capability in the design and realisation of mechatronic systems using appropriate hardware and software. You will also develop a wider knowledge of application of robotics in the real world.

This module aims to equip you to understand the process of innovation in an engineering context and be able to appreciate the way it impacts the management of an engineering enterprise.

The aim of this module is to further develop your research skills and written communication, and to develop your ability to build and articulate an evidence-based argument. It will also develop your ability to devise commercialisation strategies.

This module aims to provide you with the opportunity to undertake a major piece of self-directed engineering design using the knowledge and skills learnt throughout the programme. You will engage in the project over an extended period of time and will be expected to provide a significant personal contribution to all phases of the engineering design and development process, appropriate to the goals of your programme.

MEng Modules

This module will develop your knowledge and understanding on a range of modelling and prototyping processes and techniques in order for you to successfully complete a number of projects. You will learn to use a range of workshop machinery to accomplish this and the projects will require you to develop and use a variety of problem solving skills and to utilise knowledge gained from other taught modules.

The aim of this module is to develop your knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of electronics. You will develop a range of practical skills, attitudes and techniques required to construct electronic circuits successfully.

This module aims to enable you to write computer programmes in response to a given brief which will respond to and control physical devices and processes.

The aim of this module is to develop your knowledge and understanding of tools and techniques available to support efficient application of mathematics to engineering design.

This module aims to provide the knowledge and skills required to carry out engineering projects and will give you the opportunity to apply them, together with knowledge and skills from other modules, in practical projects.

This module aims to explore and demonstrate the role and responsibilities of engineers in various contexts outside their subject specialism. These would cover issues such as recognising obligations to society, the profession, the environment and commitment to professional standards. The module will also cover other wider issues such as globalisation (global manufacturing, operating in global markets, cultural issues, financial concerns, risk etc) and its impact on business operations.

This module aims to provide you with the knowledge and understanding of control systems and explains the principles of feedback control. The module also develops your ability to analyse techniques for designing and modelling controllers to solve real world problems based on block diagrams and transfer functions, and to use such techniques in the context of engineering design.

The module aims to provide detailed knowledge of analogue and digital electronic theories and their application. In analogue electronics, you will gain analogue electronic design skills such as a range of circuit analysis theorems, principles and applications of transistor and operational amplifiers. In digital electronics, this module equips you with the necessary knowledge of combinational and sequential logic circuits, finite state machines, and FPGA design using VHDL. The module will enable you to design analogue and digital electronic circuits through the use of appropriate methods and software tools.

This module aims to develop your understanding of the concepts and theory of operation that lie behind mechatronic devices and systems. You will gain experiential understanding of the effect that design has on these mechatronic devices through construction, programming, demonstration and analysis. This module will also develop realisable solutions to real world situations and develop your practical capability in the design and realisation of mechatronic systems using appropriate hardware and software. You will also develop a wider knowledge of application of robotics in the real world.

This module aims to equip you to understand the process of innovation in an engineering context and be able to appreciate the way it impacts the management of an engineering enterprise.

The aim of this module is to further develop your research skills and written communication, and to develop your ability to build and articulate an evidence-based argument. It will also develop your ability to devise commercialisation strategies.

This module aims to provide you with the opportunity to undertake a major piece of self-directed engineering design using the knowledge and skills learnt throughout the programme. You will engage in the project over an extended period of time and will be expected to provide a significant personal contribution to all phases of the engineering design and development process, appropriate to the goals of your programme.

This module will allow you to study, in depth, an advanced topic in design engineering. The subject of the module will change periodically reflecting the interests of staff in the department, and the interests of the students studying it. The module mirrors the dynamic nature of design engineering and how it is applied, and serves to illustrate the ever-changing character of the subject. This module will allow you to encounter cutting edge areas of design engineering.

This module aims to contextualise, exemplify and consolidate the analytical and technical knowledge and skills in relevant subject areas through engineering group projects. It will provide you with the opportunity to develop your competence in undertaking group projects and engaging in formal project management. It also aims to develop abilities in problem solving, team working, written and oral presentations.

This module aims to develop your understanding of current approaches and practical techniques used in industrial automation and control. You will also be made aware of the use of modern automation and its influences on design engineering practice.

This module aims to develop your understanding of fundamental techniques in system engineering for autonomous robotics. It will develop your understanding of software/hardware integration in robot architectures for advanced tasks, such as vision-based grasping and human-robot interaction. You will acquire knowledge and practical skills of robot vision and other sensory processing, and of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques in robotics.

The module will develop your understanding of the modelling, simulation, design, selection and programming of robotic manipulators and mobile robots. You will gain an understanding of kinematics, dynamics and control of mechatronic and robotic systems as well as practical experience of programming a manipulator. You will gain practical experience of working with software architectures for complex robotic systems and will develop an understanding of issues in mobile robotics such as mapping and navigation.

This module aims to introduce a systems engineering approach for the development of solutions to embedded problems. You will be exposed to the complexities of the design and evaluation of sociotechnic systems, including problems of managing existing components, legacy systems and other imposed constraints such as legal frameworks.

This module aims to introduce you to the design and implementation of systems typically having potentially complex concurrent behaviour, stringent timing requirements, and significant communication requirements in a single field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Examples of the system-on-a-chip (SoC) are ubiquitous and range from portable devices such as cell phones to larger devices such as routers or aircraft controllers. You will learn how to design and integrate central processing unit (CPU, here we use MicroBlaze architecture) with a range of software drivers, periphery interface circuits and memory banks to form a soft processor to suit your specific applications. This design flow will create a complete computing system which constitutes a whole embedded SoC design.

You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Optional modules are usually available at levels 5 and 6, although optional modules are not offered on every course. Where optional modules are available, you will be asked to make your choice during the previous academic year. If we have insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, or there are staffing changes which affect the teaching, it may not be offered. If an optional module will not run, we will advise you after the module selection period when numbers are confirmed, or at the earliest time that the programme team make the decision not to run the module, and help you choose an alternative module.