Welcome to ME Department!

Takayuki Shibata, Ph.D.

Mechanical engineering (ME) is classical yet an indispensable academic field for variety of industrial applications (e.g., automotive and heavy industry, material and chemistry, electrical and power device, robot and mechatronics, transport equipment). Probably you may consider that the industrial fields of food and chemistry are quite far from ME and little relation between them; unfortunately, it is not right. In fact, most of all fields of engineering and technology have factories with production/manufacturing processes under optimum design which are fully based on the knowledges learned through lectures and trainings offered by ME. Indeed, our alumni (your future colleagues) had engaged on variety of engineering fields to play their role to help further development and future innovation. ME covers wide area of engineering based on four major (classical) essential bones; such as dynamics of machinery, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and solid mechanics. In addition to such basic framework, to meet the actual demands from various kinds of engineering field, other basic fields must be covered as well, such as material science, robotics dynamics, machine control etc. For instance, we you may notice, variety of materials in frame have been adopted to the products, such as polymer, ceramic and metals, so that knowledges of material science are required for mechanical engineers. Automation of industrial factories must be supported by rich fundamentals of robotics and control and wide range of knowledges on actual devices like actuator and also global system design to select the best scheduling in order to operate in optimum condition is very useful.

In order to cover all abovementioned demands, the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology (ME-TUT) renovated in 2010 (H22) to train our students to fit to the needs from wide-range area of engineering fields through high-level education on technology and science for mechanical engineering. In detail, based on fundamental aspects of conventional ME (e.g., mechanical design, energy, production/manufacturing, system integration), we offer the education on innovative material science and engineering, nano-technology, bio(medical)-engineering, environmental engineering, management technology to support and enhance the MONO-ZUKURI (Japanese-traditional high-quality production legacy). To end, our ME department consists four courses “Mechanical System Design”, “Material and Manufacturing”, “System Control and Robotics”, and “Environmental and Energy”, and laboratories in our department are all affiliated with those four courses and professional academic staffs deliver professional education through their expertise to our students. After 4th year of undergraduate student (who start to the research activity in the lab), all of registered students belongs to the lab and corresponding course to obtain exciting professional experience through our education system.

In “Mechanical System Design” course, the following four laboratories such as; Material and Structural Mechanics Laboratory, Machine Dynamics Laboratory, Frontier Forming System Laboratory, MEMS/NEMS Processing Laboratory, are organized to deliver the professional education on these area of expertise. Corresponding research subjects include establishment of advanced structural materials science, dynamic system analysis and optimum design, MEMS device design, plastic support molding processing etc.

In “Material and Manufacturing” course, the following four laboratories such as; Materials Function Control Laboratory, Laboratory for Materials Strength & Characterization in 3D/4D, Thin Film Laboratory, Interface and Surface Fabrication Laboratory, are organized to deliver the professional education on these area of expertise. Corresponding research subjects include R&D of high-quality photoelectric conversion element, development of nanostructure steel material, development of high-strength non-ferrous metal material and its evaluation, achievement of high-quality joining and surface coating technology etc.

In “System Control and Robotics” course, the following four laboratories such as; Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory, Instrumentation Systems Laboratory, System and Control Engineering Laboratory, Systems Engineering Laboratory, are organized to deliver the professional education on these area of expertise. Corresponding research subjects include computational and systems science, intellectual state measurement and its evaluation, system control and design, design of robotics and mechatronics etc. Collaboration with Center for Human-Robot Symbiosis Research is extensively made.
In “Environmental and Energy” course, the following four laboratories such as; Energy Conversion Engineering Laboratory, Thermo-Fluid Engineering Laboratory, Natural Energy Conversion Science Laboratory, Energy Conservation Engineering Laboratory , are organized to deliver the professional education on these area of expertise. Corresponding research subjects include turbulent flow structure and its control, energy-harvesting technology and development, innovative energy transport device, cutting-edge fluid power device, combustion and fire dynamics etc.

The course works offered by our ME department are all available in this website and our curriculum has been certified by Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education (JABEE). Furthermore, we provide specially-designed course/program for students who wish to be a global or practical engineers, such as MOT (management of technology) course or Double-degree Program with Stuttgart University (Germany). Through a variety of educational programs provided from our ME department, we have no doubt that all registered students has full-of-chance to gain a rich of fundamental and professional knowledges, and be well-trained to apply them to real engineering problems, then be bursting to grow creative and innovative engineers/researchers in near future.

Takayuki Shibata, Ph.D.
Department Chair since 2022.4