What is Automobile Engineering - Carrier Scope, Colleges and industries roles?
Automotive engineering is all about the designing,
manufacturing and development of operation automobiles like cars, motorcycles and trucks etc.
As Subdomain of Mechanical Engineering Automobile Industries has also great scope and providing
various carrier option. In this Article we are going
to cover all the carrier relative quarries of Automobile Engineering. Like what is Automobile Engineering and its Carrier Scope, how to get into the field and what's going in the field And such many more topics.
○ Sub-Domain of Automobile
○ How to become an Automobile Engineering
○ Future Of Automotive Industries
○ Scope of automobile Engineering
○ Inside of Automotive Industries
○ College's Society (i.e SAE)
Table Of Content
○ What is Automotive Engineering○ Sub-Domain of Automobile
○ How to become an Automobile Engineering
○ Future Of Automotive Industries
○ Scope of automobile Engineering
○ Inside of Automotive Industries
○ College's Society (i.e SAE)
What is Automotive Engineering?
Automobile: An Automobile is a Self-Powered Vehicle, which is means to
Carrie/Transport goods and Passenger from one place to another for example:
car, motorcycle and truck etc.
Automotive Engineering is the branch of engineering which deals with
design, manufacturing, maintenance and Operation of Automobiles.
Sub-Domains of Automobile.
There are a lot of sub disciplines within automotive engineering and there are many things you can work on when it comes to an automobile. Such as:
1. The safety aspect and assessing various crash
scenarios. Whether it be on the computer to doing actual crash testing. Cars
needing to meet certain standards to protect the driver and passengers. The
frame of the car would have to be designed properly. Such that, energy from a
crash is absorbed or moved away from the driver.
Cars are meant to crumple in an accident as
engineers to design them like that, to save lives of the people inside. If the
car was extremely strong and no damage was done to it. All that energy would be
transferred to the people inside.
2. The performance and analysing, how fast the car
can accelerate, how quickly you can come to a complete stop. Which of course is
important!
3. The vehicle dynamics and looking at things like
braking, handling and steering and how the vehicle will respond. The engineer
who works on this enough to analyse or design the braking the tires and wheels
suspension they could work on the frame as well and more.
4. The fuel economy where, you look at fuel efficiency
in miles per gallon and test car emissions. Such as, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide,
carbon dioxide and so on. But of course this wouldn't be the case for electric
vehicles. There's a shift quality where, you focus more on the transmission,
the durability of the car, electronics and much more. Overall just note that
there are many components to a vehicle. Common jobs would be like designing on
the computer, testing and actually working with a physical vehicle or even
manufacturing where your help with the making of the vehicle and its
components.
How to become an Automobile Engineer
When it comes to college, Automotive Engineering is
rarely offered as a major at least for undergrad. The most common major to go
into is mechanical engineering and then you would pursue careers in the
automotive industry or you get your masters needing PhD in automotive
engineering.
There is also another option, if you want to work
on cars. Such as,
- Materials engineers can work on cars,
- Electrical engineers can work on cars especially with electric carts becoming a thing.
- Computer scientists are even needed for self-driving cars to write the programs for the autopilot as an example.
- And even mechatronics, which may be its own major depending on your school or just a sub-field of mechanical engineering. But, this can lead you to working on the car control systems and similar aspects.
These are just to name a few. So, you can work on cars
through various majors. But mechanical is just the most common one people think
of and also depends on which aspect of the vehicle you want to work off.
Future of Automotive Industries
Future of Automotive Industries, Self Driving Car |
Self-Driving Car's
A huge area of research you probably all know is self-driving
cars. Companies like Tesla, Honda, Toyota, Ford, General Motors and more are
all aiming to get self-driving cars out on the road.
Now, we do have self-driving cars right now. But there
are restrictions to them and at the moment we are still waiting for a fully
autonomous vehicle that's available to consumers.
Elon Musk says that we should have a self-driving
car that can go from LA to New York completely on its own in the near future. Though
there are plenty of obstacles that exist like being able to sense unexpected
encounters, like an officer directing traffic or a broken stoplight. You need
to deal with ethical decisions, what to do in a life-and-death situation
operating safely in various weather conditions and so on.
Self-driving cars have many components. So, lots of
engineering will needed for this to make possible. Just to name a few there
are:
LIDAR
(or light detection and ranging).
Which
basically uses light to detect surroundings.
GPS
Which
the car uses to navigate to its destination and so that it knows where you are.
Radar
system
Which
is also used to map out the surroundings. But, using lower frequency waves than
light or what the LIDAR uses and this has its advantages. As one example LIDAR
will not work with heavy fog whereas, radar will.
Cameras
Which
read the road and the surroundings as well. But, they can also read traffic
lights and research is going into putting these together with even more
components to make a safe self-driving car.
But even though self-driving cars seem to be the
main thing happening other aspects of cars are also trying to be optimized.
Take the example of new Audi 8 Suspension. This new
suspension system incorporates an electric motor for each individual wheel. There's
a camera on the front that reads the road into text bumps. So, that the air
suspension can coincide with those bumps and with those precise reactions you
can nearly eliminate vibrations.
Working with the camera and transmission of data
could be worked on by an electrical or maybe computer engineer. But the
suspension system itself in doing tests on vibration would be something a
mechanical engineer would do. Those research going on materials that aim to
make a lighter but safer cars. This may involve looking at different types of metals
that have different properties like varying strength and density.
Scope of Automobile Engineering
A lot of the metals in cars today did not exist
just 15 years ago and we are still continuing to make advancements in this
area. Now, just to show again how much there is to work on take an example of Forbes
article titled “What will mechanical engineers do after most cars go electric”.
Which is an absolute fair question. Because, electric cars don't have an
internal combustion engine and so are the mechanical engineers needed!
Well of course, they are. Even though mechanical
engineers do work on engines, most of them work on other stuff. Such as
- Airbag,
- The trunk mechanism,
- The suspension,
- Shock absorbers,
- Frame of the car,
- The windshield
- And even the windshield wipers.
Everything that a car has, someone and usually
multiple people have to work on design, tests and manufacture. The article even
really shows you the detail and they say how even the plastic tail-light cover
had to make accurately and economically. So, that could fit the car and another
engineer even had to design the machine that makes that taillight. There's so
much more detail than you may think, about all the things that we use. So yes
mechanical engineers are of course still needed.
Inside of Automobile Industries?
When it comes to companies, you may think to work in
some of the typical ones like Honda, Toyota, ford, Tesla and so on. But, there
are also suppliers for these companies and there are multiple articles available
on internet state that, you might even do more of the cool design work at those
places. That you probably haven't heard of.
Take an example Honda. A huge company that almost
everyone knows. But do you think every single part of a Honda is made by them
at their plants! Because they actually are not. Many other companies help with
certain parts. Such as,
- AGC Automotive supplies Honda's wind-shields
- TAKATA supplies their airbags
- BorgWarner supplies to automatic transmission systems
- Automatic spring products supplies to sea components, and there are more.
So, even if you don't land a job at Honda or Toyota
just realize how many more companies there are that you can work at.
Now, something like windshields may not sound very
exciting. But, if you go to the AGC Automotive website, which supplies their
windshields and look at their products you'll see a lot of things. Things like
heads-up displays on windshields, which basically display dashboard information
on the windshield. So drivers can say focus on the road. There’s high
insulating glass for heat transfer optimization to maximize comfort. They’re
trying to make lighter windshields to help improve the car's mpg by reducing
weight and they're even working on glass. Where what's the press of a button you
can control how much light and heat comes in. which helps reduce the need for
AC. So, when people say they want to work on cars just realize there's way more
to it, than you may think. You may help design the overall concept of a new
vehicle. But you might help design the windshields, the suspension, and the
frame of the car and raise other specific aspects of these vehicles.
Society of Automotive Engineers
Society of Automotive Engineering, Society in Colleges aim to design a Formula style race car. |
In college you want to make sure, you also get involved in automotive projects. Looking to join the Society of Automotive Engineers (or SAE), which your College might offer. Then you'll be updated on competitions you can participate in. Look up the Formula SAE, which is a student competition amongst college students or they aim to design a formula style race car, like the one you see here based on certain rules. Such as, which engine you might have to use. Then you’re scored by a variety of factors like costs of manufacturing, acceleration, fuel economy, endurance etc.
There's also an electric vehicle competition done
by this organization. You’ll work with a team get hands-on experience and you
have a great thing to put on your resume.
So, hopefully this article gave you a general
summary of what automotive engineering is and what you can expect in the field.
If you like this article don't forget to share this with your friends and
relatives. And Comment down in which sector you want to work.
Post a Comment