Department of Aerospace Engineering

Engineering Mechanics Graduate Program

Get Paid to Learn

Research assistantships and teaching assistantships are available to qualified students to help offset the cost of graduate education. In addition, there are graduate scholarships and fellowships available to highly qualified students.

In the Aerospace Engineering department, most of the graduate students receive either a Teaching Assistant (TA) position or a Research Assistant (RA) position, which provides a stipend and covers a percentage or all of their tuition.  Graduate students in the Aerospace Engineering department also have access to computers in their offices, and for advanced research applications there are high-end server computers available.

For more information, see Financial Aid for Graduate Students.

Admission to Graduate Study

The Graduate Admissions Office handles all admissions to Iowa State graduate programs. Graduate information is available from the Admissions page from the Graduate College.

You may also contact the college by mail:

Graduate Admissions Office
100 Alumni Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011-3232

Prerequisites

The prerequisite for graduate study is the equivalent of a BS degree in engineering. However, because of the diversity of research in engineering mechanics, it is possible to qualify for graduate study even though undergraduate or prior graduate study has been in a discipline other than engineering, e.g., physics or mathematics.

Points of Pride

ISU’s Aerospace Engineering graduate program is ranked in the top 25 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

Our department has exciting educational programs in aerodynamics, aerospace structures, propulsion, flight mechanics and guidance as well as space systems with a lot of hands-on experience in the classroom and out of the classroom.

Our faculty and their students conduct cutting-edge research in nondestructive evaluation, computational fluid dynamics, wind engineering and experimental aerodynamics, guidance and control, aircraft icing, rotorcraft/UAV/MAV, turbine science and technology, and micro/nano mechanics of materials.

IIn the Aerospace Engineering department, most of the graduate students receive either a Teaching Assistantship (TA) position or a Research Assistantship (RA), which provides a stipend and covers a percentage or all of their tuition.  Graduate students in the Aerospace Engineering department also have access to computers in their office space, and for advanced research applications there are high-end server computers available.

Students have career connections with research partnerships and contracts with Boeing, GE, GM, Lockheed Martin, NASA, or Rockwell Collins.

Our department has 28 faculty members, 2 of which are members of the National Academy of Engineering (1 emeritus), with about $9.8 million annual research expenditures.  The aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics faculty are a diverse group of educators. They include award-winning teachers, authors, researchers, and inventors, leaders of professional societies, journal editors, and consultants. Their backgrounds include experience from aerospace corporations, government laboratories, and universities from around the world.

The department is housed in a $31 million state-of-the-art teaching and research complex.

Top-flight facilities/laboratories to conduct research that match industry and research standards.  Our laboratories emphasize practical skills.

State of the art computer labs which satisfy the low and high-end computing requirement  Most of our graduate students are provided with office space.

Iowa State’s College of Engineering is ranked in the top 25 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

U.S. News and World Report ranked Iowa State as one of the top 50 public colleges in the nation.

Ames is the 2nd most livable small city in the nation [New Rating Guide to Life in America’s Small Cities]. You can bike to class during the day and to world-class cultural events at night.

Iowa State's campus was rated one of America's 25 most beautiful in the book "The Campus as a Work of Art.”

The beauty of ISU’s 2,000 park-like acres has earned ISU recognition as one of three central campuses on the American Association of Landscape Architects’ centennial list of great sites.  ISU is a Carnegies Foundation Research Institution, a designation granted to fewer than 100 of the nation’s colleges and universities.

Graduate Handbook

Program of Study

The Department of Aerospace Engineering offers a master of engineering, master of science, and doctor of philosophy degrees in engineering mechanics.

Degree Requirement

Courses

For course descriptions, see the ISU catalog. Engineering mechanics courses include the following:   

* E M 510. Continuum Mechanics  
* E M 514. Advanced Mechanics of Materials   
* E M 516. Mechanics of Deformable Solids   
* E M 517. Experimental Mechanics   
* E M 518. Waves in Elastic Solids with Applications to Ultrasonic Nondestructive Evaluation   
* E M 525. Finite Element Analysis   
* E M 526. Boundary Element Methods in Engineering   
* E M 543. Introduction to Random Vibrations and Nonlinear Dynamics   
* E M 548. Advanced Engineering Dynamics   
* E M 550. Fundamentals of Nondestructive Evaluation   
* E M 552. Advanced Acoustics   
* E M 564. Fracture and Fatigue   
* E M 569. Mechanics of Composite and Combined Materials   
* E M 570. Wind Engineering   
* E M 590. Special Topics        
     o Introduction to Dislocation and Plasticity         
     o Mechanics of Thin Films and Adhesives         
     o Mechanics of Cellular and Porous Media         
     o Other

Research in Engineering Mechanics

With excellent facilities and a world-class faculty, we have very strong research programs in quite a few areas.

Active engineering mechanics-related research programs exist in

Learn more about

Facilities

The department is part of an impressive $31 million research complex. Research facilities include laboratories for experimental work in low speed aero dynamics, ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation, wind engineering, composite material fabrication and testing, and structural materials testing. 

We provide unique research facilities and tools such as

Learn more about our research facilities.

ISU's Center on Nondestructive Evaluation provides excellent interdisciplinary research opportunities.  Learn more about our research centers.

Learn More

For more information, contact one of the following: