Concentration Offered to ME Students:
This multidisciplinary concentration aims to prepare engineers and scientists for employment in the current and future thermal systems in power plants (conventional and nuclear), oil & gas, refrigeration & air-conditioning, thermal desalination plants, and the Kingdom's manufacturing industries. These industries' current and future challenges include increasing the plants' availability and sustainability. This multidisciplinary concentration focuses on deepening the students' knowledge of the available thermal systems (i.e., power-producing and power-consuming systems that comprise heat exchangers, pumps, and piping systems), focusing on choosing components and thermal systems with enhanced performance and environmental integrity. It will be accomplished by introducing students to emerging design tools, performance evaluation, and maintenance of such components and strategies to improve life expectancy and performance.
COURCES:
- ME458: Design of Thermo-Fluid Systems
- ME460: Thermal Desalination Systems
- CHE432: Prin of Heat Exchanger Design
- ME430: Air Conditioning
This interdisciplinary program focuses on the desire increase the mechanical and environmental longevity of components in manufacturing facilities and products, with wide applicability to materials processing, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries. Topics include the structures and mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of non-metallics, and the processing of ceramics, polymers, and composites. Students learn materials selection and design, mechanical design process, product shape, multiple constraints, conflicting objectives, hybrid materials, and the impact of materials selection on the environment. Other topics include polymers (homogeneous and heterogeneous polymerization processes, engineering properties of polymers, etc.), and the failure of materials, including materials degradation and prevention, cost of materials failures, modulus-limited design, yield-limited design, fracture mechanics and toughness, fatigue failures, creep and creep fracture, oxidation and corrosion of alloys, friction and wear, lubrication, etc.
COURCES:
- ME476: Non-Metallic Materials
- CHE463: Polymer Technology
- ME420: Materials Selection and Design
- ME457: Failure of Materials & Prevent
This interdisciplinary program covers the science, engineering, and industrial applications of non-metallic materials, including polymers and ceramics. Topics include the chemical structure, synthesis, characterization, and processing of non-metallic materials, including their structure (ceramic, glass, composite materials) with attention to polymers (natural, synthetic, polymerization, thermoplastics, thermosets, elastomers, fibers, engineering plastics, specialty, composites, synthesis processes) and their application in construction, piping in the oil and gas industry, membranes for purification and separation processes, coatings for corrosion prevention, and others.
COURCES:
- ME476: Non-Metallic Materials
- CHE463: Polymer Technology
- CHE484: Polymer Composites & Apps.
- CHEM457: Polymer Characterization & Ana
This interdisciplinary program aims to produce students with the fundamental knowledge and skills necessary to be qualified safety engineers. Graduates of this program learn the principles of process safety and hazards analysis, mitigation, and prevention, with special emphasis on the chemical process industries. Topics include source modeling for leakage rates, dispersion analysis, relief valve sizing, fire and explosion damage analysis, hazards identification, risk analysis, accident investigation, occupational safety, safety administration, legal aspect of industrial safety, hazardous waste management and treatment, including regulations, environmental audits, and pollution prevention. Students also learn the assessment and management of risk, uncertainty, and reliability, including quantitative risk assessment, and understanding the link between safety and human factors.
COURCES:
- CE476: Ind Hazardous Waste Mgt. Tret
- CHE458: Process Safety Engineering
- ISE465: Industrial Safety
- ME461: Risk Mgt Tool in Sys Dsgn & Op
- Renewable Energy and Energy Storage
This interdisciplinary program covers various renewable energy technologies, including solar (photovoltaic and concentrated solar power), wind, hydrogen, geothermal, and waste-to-energy systems, as well as energy storage options such as electrical (e.g. batteries and super capacitors), fuel cells, and thermal storage. Students understand the components of renewable energy systems, evaluate the potential (technical, economic, and environmental) of renewable energy at specific sites, design and assess the performance of renewable systems, and study the integration of renewable energy systems with energy storage systems and with conventional energy systems. The program also covers renewable energy project management, grid integration of renewables, smart grids, net-zero buildings, and touches on renewable energy policy and environmental law.
COURCES:
- CHE444: FuelCells,Batteries & Supercap
- ECON475: Intro. Energy Mkt, Poli & Reg
- CHE424: Funda. of Renewable En. Proce.
- ME439: Solar Energy Conversion
This interdisciplinary program covers sustainable energy-efficient practices and the most effective management of energy systems. The scale of application includes component-level, small system level (e.g. building), and large-scale level (e.g. entire cities, and interconnected systems). Students evaluate component and system energy efficiency and design efficient energy management programs, as well as learn energy auditing and reporting. Topics include the principles and application of energy conservation, loss inspection, instrumentation calibration, renewable and sustainable energy systems, building energy management, and smart monitoring of energy systems. Topics also include demand side management; efficiency of generation, transmission, and distribution systems; energy efficiency policies, standards, and regulations; and auditing of buildings, HVAC, and compressed air systems.
COURCES:
- ARE442: Building Energy Analysis
- EE459: Electrical Energy Efficiency
- EE468: Renewable Energy
- ME429: Energy Efficiency and Auditing
- Drone Design and Application
This interdisciplinary program develops the design and build of fixed-wing and multi-rotor drones at several levels of autonomy, from remote-controlled, to human-supervised, to fully autonomous. Topics include the physics of flight, fuselage design, rotor design, drone dynamics, performance and stability, control systems, guidance and navigation, mission payloads, ground control systems, and autonomous systems. Students conceive, design, fabricate (in 3D prototype), and apply drones. This program also covers drone swarms, regulations, security, AI, and machine learning, and touches on emerging anti-drone solutions. Applications of this field are universal, and have become omnipresent in most industries. The program emphasizes the applications of drones in the new digital economy by highlighting case studies of the utilization of drones in industries such as like oil and gas, logistics, environment, security, etc.
- COURCES:
- AE449: Funda. of Unmanned Aerial Sys.
- CISE483: AI & ML for Robotics
- CISE482: Path Plan. & Nav for Mob. Robo
- AE454: UAS Design and Integration
This interdisciplinary concentration covers all components of the hydrogen supply chain network from production to use as a clean fuel for transportation. This includes hydrogen generation using solar or wind powered water electrolysis, biomass gasification, natural gas steam reforming and heavy oil residue catalytic partial oxidation. It also covers physical methods of hydrogen storage, such as fuel cells, batteries and super capacitors, and at compressed, liquefied and cryo-compressed conditions as well as material-based methods, including metal hydrides, liquid organic carriers, and adsorbents. The application of hydrogen in fuel cell electric vehicles and internal combustion engines is covered extensively from a technical (design), economic, and environmental point of view. The concentration also covers large-scale hydrogen storage and its interaction with power infrastructure.
COURCES:
- CHE444: FuelCells,Batteries & Supercap
- EE458: Hydrogen & Electricity Infrast
- CHE404: Hydrogen production & storage
- ME432: Internal Combustion Engines
- Polymer Science and Technology
This interdisciplinary program on the science and application of polymers, including the synthesis, characterization and applications of various polymeric materials. This program is at the heart of specialty chemical applications, and the need for it is quite broad in the petrochemical industry, Topics include polymerization reactions, and polymerization techniques (step-growth, radical, ionic, ring-opening, transition metal catalysts). Other topics include polymer kinetics, stereochemistry, structure, and structure-property relationships, as well as polymer characterization, processing, rheology, and homogeneous and heterogeneous polymerization processes. In addition, the sustainability and degradation of polymers are also discussed.
COURCES:
- CHEM451: Polymer Chemistry
- ME453: Polymer Sustainability
- CHEM457: Polymer Characterization & Ana
- ME480: Plastics Materials &Processing
- Intelligent Energy Systems Management
The digital revolution taking place in the energy and utility sectors is known as Energy 4.0, which involves the internet of things, big data, cloud computing, machine learning, and data analytics, automation, interconnectivity, etc. Therefore, modern energy systems management should exploit a large volume of data acquired from various measurement devices for extensive monitoring and control of the systems to achieve efficiency and sustainability goals in the energy sector. The knowledge of the mentioned technologies helps develop intelligent energy ecosystems for buildings, factories, and smart grids with the incorporation of distributed energy resources. Considering the mentioned notes, it is necessary to offer an interdisciplinary intelligent energy systems management concentration (CX) program at KFUPM for the undergraduate students of the relevant departments (mechanical, electrical, systems, and architectural engineering) that adds values to their curriculum vitae and enhance their overall understanding on intelligent management and control of the energy systems. The focus of the proposed CX program is to provide a deeper understanding of the development and operation of smart and sustainable energy systems. Besides, it will provide them with adequate knowledge of the energy data acquisition and their intelligent monitoring, control, and management to enhance systems efficiency and lifetime at reduced costs. Finally, it will help the students understand policies, standards, and regulations related to energy technologies and data management. Concentration Courses: (1) ME 447 - Intelligent Energy Systems (2) ISE 468: Introduction to Machine Learning and Data Analytics (3) GS 445 - Energy Management and Policies (4) ME 429 - Energy Auditing
COURCES:
- ME429: Energy Efficiency and Auditing
- ME447: Intelligent Energy Systems
- ISE468: Intro M/c Learning & Data Anal
- GS445: Energy Management and Policies
- Computational Materials and Modeling
Computational Materials is a relatively new and rapidly evolving strongly interdisciplinary subject that brings together elements from various disciplines of science and engineering. This concentration studies the interrelation between the structure and properties of materials, which is at the heart of understanding material behavior at a range of different length and time scales. Topics include Monte Carlo simulation, Markov chains, random walks, stochastic systems (e.g. Brownian dynamics), and continuous phase transitions in lattices. The program also covers atomistic simulations, including molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory, as well as applications in, catalysis, nanomaterials, alloy design, corrosion inhibitors, and 3D printing. Other topics include material informatics, e.g. machine learning (statistical learning, regression, classification, unsupervised learning, etc.) and its application in materials selection for engineering design and multi-scale modeling.
COURCES:
- ME476: Non-Metallic Materials
- PHYS431: Monte Carlo Simu. in Stat Mech
- ME449: Introduction to Atomistic Simu
- PHYS473: Materials Informatics
