MEng Mechanical Engineering

Overview

Mechanical engineering is essential to addressing modern challenges that require advanced technical solutions and new, innovative ways of thinking. This MEng Mechanical Engineering degree is the extended version of the BEng Mechanical Engineering course.

We’re proud to have received a number of accreditations that rank us as one of the top universities for MEng Mechanical Engineering in the UK, including:

• Guardian University Guide 2020: 1st in Scotland and top 10 in the UK
• Complete University Guide 2021: Top 10 in the UK
• Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021: Top 10 in the UK
• Guardian University League Tables 2021: Top 10 in the UK

MEng Mechanical Engineering programme structure

You’ll receive a grounding in the core disciplines of mechanical engineering in the first two years of your MEng Mechanical Engineering degree. When you get to the point of taking optional degrees, this will help you make informed decisions.

In Year 1, students work alongside peers from other science and engineering disciplines and have access to mechanical labs, electrical engineering labs, chemical labs, and physics labs. This provides fundamental lab skills as well as multidisciplinary teamworking skills which will be crucial as the degree progresses and becomes increasingly specialised.  

You’ll progress into practical workshop sessions in the lab in your second and third year. Here, you’ll learn about fluids, design and manufacturing, dynamics, and thermodynamics – all core principles of mechanical engineering. 

Your fourth and fifth year in your MEng Mechanical Engineering course will include staff-supported individual and group projects, which will help you step into a career as a mechanical engineer. You’ll follow your own path through a wide range of optional courses designed to develop knowledge and skills in specialist engineering subjects.  

This five-year MEng Mechanical Engineering degree is the standard route towards a Chartered Engineering professional qualification, so you can progress towards that with this degree.

As well as career-specific skills and knowledge, Heriot-Watt’s MEng Mechanical Engineering course will also equip you with vital soft skills, which employers place huge importance on. These important skills include teamworking alongside fellow mechanical engineers and students from other engineering disciplines, such as chemical and electrical engineering. You’ll gain skills for professional presentations and technical writing, and develop business awareness, covering issues such-as life-cycle sustainability and financial viability.

The UK’s sustainable future will be driven by mechanical engineers through their work on efficiency and working with cleaner energy sources.

Mechanical engineering principles such as fluid mechanics and thermodynamics are essential to our future of green energy. They play a huge role in gas boiler-alternatives, heat pumps, and power renewable energy sources including wind turbines. Other developments gained through mechanical engineering will increase the efficiency and performance of aircraft and transport, and improve medical engineering and nanotechnology.

Industry links

Our MEng Mechanical Engineering degree is a head and shoulders above other university courses thanks to our industrial connections. We work closely with an Industrial Advisory Board – a panel of engineers and business leaders – to ensure that our course content reflects the needs of industry and employers to provide graduates with the right blend of knowledge, practical skills, and soft skills.

Through this board, we ensure our curriculum is up to date and relevant to emerging needs and technological requirements. A recent example is the inclusion of the optional biomedical engineering course offered in Years 4 and 5.

As part of your practical project in Year 4, you’ll be challenged by the Industrial Advisory Board to come up with a solution to an engineering problem affecting a real business. Students will present their design project to the industrial panel, who will assess the work as clients would, providing professional feedback and advice.

MEng Mechanical Engineering facilities

Our new £19 million state-of-the-art Global Research Innovation and Discovery Centre (GRID) is now in place on our Edinburgh campus. The mechanical engineering discipline is one of the major stakeholders in this new building, utilising it to provide students with lab-based practical activities. Students have the chance to use the ‘Makers space’ with 3D printers and a laser cutter to rapidly prototype their own designs. In addition, our extensive teaching and research labs facilitate work in areas such as dynamics, materials engineering, and fluid mechanics.

Careers

With our MEng Mechanical Engineering degree, you have so many exciting career prospects ahead where you’ll be working with innovative technologies and infrastructure. Recent Heriot-Watt graduates have progressed to working for organisations such as Mercedes, Babcock Marine, McLaren, Shell UK, Halliburton, and QinetiQ.

You’ll design, develop, optimise, and operate a range of mechanical parts in your career as a mechanical engineer. All industrial sectors value mechanical engineers, including manufacturing, oil and gas, aerospace, and automotive, as well as emerging areas such as energy and renewable energy, medical engineering, and nanotechnology.

Mechanical Engineering Research

We were ranked 1st in Scotland and 3rd in the UK for engineering research through a joint submission with the University of Edinburgh in REF 2021 which classed 96% of our research output as ‘world-class’.

The Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering promotes excellence across its main research themes: Biomedical Engineering, Energy Harvesting and Conversion, Multiphase Flow and Digital Engineering. Heriot-Watt University is the leader amongst UK universities in promoting energy activities through its ‘Energy Academy’, a virtual centre which connects all energy-related research across the University.

Global College pathway for this degree

If you do not meet the entry requirements for this degree, have a look at Heriot-Watt Global College, where you can follow an accelerated pathway which will get you onto the second year of this degree.

Accreditation

This programme is accredited by IMechE.

Students completing an IMechE accredited degree are deemed to have met part or all of the academic requirements for registration as a Chartered or Incorporated Engineer and are in a strong position to move on to achieve professional engineering status after a period of initial professional development in industry. For more details, please refer to this webpage: IMechE Accreditation