Design Engineering BEng(Hons) with integrated foundation year

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Why choose Brighton?

• Foundation year that opens up opportunities in engineering if you don’t hold the required qualifications, are changing career or returning to study.
• Work alongside others in a friendly, creative and collaborative studio environment.
• Project work such as designing and building water rockets, finding solutions to Fixperts challenges, working on the design and development of bike force pedals for Team GB.
• Specialist facilities include flight and car simulators, wind tunnel, prototyping labs and workshops, CNC machines, robotics and VR labs.
• Expert staff with excellent industry contacts.
• Guest lectures from professionals.
• Gain work experience on placement during your BEng degree.
• Bike Sim Lab – research project developing mechanical and aerodynamic tools for bicycle training and simulators

Foundation year 

On successful completion of the foundation year, you will transfer to the Design Engineering BEng(Hons) course.

Modules

• Core Mathematics
• Core Science
• Engineering Mathematics
• Engineering Science
• Mechanics and Geometry
• Foundation Year Project

Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Year 1

You’ll be introduced to the fundamental elements of product design and engineering, building your skills in terms of making, thinking and evaluation. Later in the year you'll be introduced to more complex design issues and skills including digital prototyping and manufacture, and inclusive design, and human factors.

You’ll work on projects such as: designing and building water rockets, and building an electrical system to measure light. Project work also includes engaging with a global community of design innovators Fixperts, working to find practical solutions to everyday challenges.

Modules

• Design Practice: Creativity, Prototyping and Communication

  This module introduces you to product design knowledge, skills and abilities. You will explore 2D, 3D and digital skills as well as the workshop facilities and making practices and skills that will help develop your understanding of prototyping, and design for manufacture. You'll also find out about design methods, approaches and ways of thinking that will enable you to better understand ways in which designers research, develop and communicate ideas.

• Design Engineering: Fundamentals

  This module introduces the fundamental mathematics, statistics and engineering sciences that are required to become a professional design engineer. You will learn these topics through a series of practical, hands-on activities, using theoretical principles to solve design engineering problems. Topics are triangulated so that you'll use theoretical/mathematical calculations to make predictions against your own experimental data generated by taking measurements in the lab. This data is then used to validate computational models you will develop in software.

• Design Practice: Inclusive Design

  Work with other students to create ingenious solutions to an everyday problem for a real person. Your group will research, develop, test and propose viable human-centred design solutions using research methods, creative techniques, prototyping and testing methods, communication and storytelling techniques. Alongside the group work you will enhance your 2D, 3D and digital skills, building on your ability to design and present using CAD and supporting your ability to record and communicate using film-making and editing. You'll also learn methods and approaches that support  effective group working.

• Design Technologies: Digital Manufacturing

  This module introduces you to digital fabrication principles, methods and tools which are explored and applied in a practical way through a series of mini design exercises followed by a 'stretch' exercise enabling you to apply what you have learned in an area that interests you. Students can make a variety of prototypes using CAD/CAM, 3D printing and scanning, electronics design and production, and wired and wireless communications. Your learning will be practical and hands-on, and you'll explore how to use the tools, equipment and machines developing your understanding the theory of how they work along with a critical evaluation of their applications.

Year 2

Year 2 is your opportunity to develop products for a real market, considering the commercial side of product development, including design for manufacturability and assembly, costing and fulfilment. And learn how to prototype with a range of technologies.

You'll learn how to engage with challenging global issues, connecting everyday practices to long-term consequences and becoming familiar with frameworks to help guide design decisions and ambitions.

You will also build on the fundamental engineering topics covered in your first year. Project work covers control systems and includes: building a self-balancing robot, modelling dynamics of vehicles, and a project that brings together heat transfer and thermal modelling with fluids and structures.

Modules

• Design Practice: Design to Market
• Design Engineering: Systems
• Design Practice: Responsible Design
• Design Technologies: Interactions and Experiences

Placement year

A placement year gives you the opportunity to gain professional experience either through external work placements with industry partners or working on live projects.

You can also choose to study abroad for the year with one of our partner universities, instead of undertaking the professional placement.

Graduating award

If you undertake and pass your placement year, your experience will be reflected in the degree that you graduate with - Design Engineering with Professional Experience BEng(Hons).

Final year

Projects at the beginning of your final year help you define your design engineering specialism, by allowing you to focus on your professional ambitions. You'll develop expertise through an advanced engineering project informed by research, such as working on the design and development of bike force pedal sensors for Team GB.

Later in the year you’ll undertake a project informed by an industry or research brief, integrating the Design Practice and Design Technologies modules, which will incorporate the values, principles, skills and experience you have gained into design outcomes that are well resolved and well communicated.

Modules

• Design Practice: Professional Practices
• Design Engineering: Specialist
• Launch Project (Design Engineering)
• Design Technologies: Self-directed Project

Staff profile 

Dr Derek Covill, course leader

 I really enjoy empowering students with these tools, to show the impact they can have and how we can do amazing things with them. Also I enjoy working seeing students grow and develop. I try to work with students in ways that help them learn how to be resourceful, how to take on a professional mindset so that they can learn how to learn and develop, but also that this is an exciting, simulating and fun subject to be involved in.

Read more about Dr Covill.

Course fees

If you choose to take the professional placement (sandwich) year offered on this course you will pay a reduced fee during this year. Our fee for the professional placement year is £1,410 for UK students and £2,180 for international students. This fee may be subject to small increases, in line with inflation.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2024–25.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate and postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

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