Mechanical Engineering

Engineers at MIT can now predict a liquid’s droplet size distribution, including the likelihood of producing very big and very small droplets, based on one main property: the liquid’s viscoelasticity, or stickiness.

Spray tuning

New method determines distribution of droplet sizes for wide range of sticky fluids.

November 9, 2016

Ruo-Qian Wang (left) worked with engineers at Jain Irrigation Systems in Jalgaon, India, to understand the design requirements for high-efficiency irrigation technology.

Re-engineering the sprinkler

New MIT research on the flow of water in flexible tubes could make irrigation technology more sustainable and cost-effective.

November 9, 2016

Why have solar energy costs fallen?

MIT team awarded U.S. Department of Energy grant to investigate cost reductions in solar energy systems.

October 26, 2016

“I was lucky enough to discover MIT and my passion for engineering through MITES. I want to show students how great it is here and that yes, you can truly find paradise,” says senior Sade Nabahe.

Seeing solutions through, across continents

When a plan to improve stoves in Peru met unexpected challenges, MIT senior Sade Nabahe rose to meet them.

October 26, 2016

While most solid materials expand with heat, this 3-D-printed structure, designed by MIT engineers, is designed to shrink, based on the stretching and pulling of its internal beams and trusses.

3-D-printed structures shrink when heated

Counterintuitive “metamaterial” may enable heat-resistant circuit boards.

October 25, 2016

Electric motors find new roles in robots, ships, cars, and microgrids

James Kirtley discusses the transition from gas to electric motors and the impact these motors have had on modern technologies.

October 24, 2016

Professors Leon Glicksman (left) and John Lienhard recently published "Modeling and Approximation in Heat Transfer," following a nearly 20-year collaboration.

3Q: Leon Glicksman and John Lienhard on how to teach the unteachable

MIT professors take on problem formulation in thermal science: It can be taught, and their new book describes how.

October 21, 2016

Ten from the Department of Physics honored by the American Physical Society

Prize winners include faculty, students, and alumni from all divisions.

October 19, 2016

This desalination plant in Israel, called Sorek, is currently the world's largest, producing 625,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day. Boris Liberman, chief technology officer of IDE Technologies, the company that built this and several other huge desalination plants in Israel and California, was among the speakers at MIT's Low Carbon Desalination Workshop, which explored the potential for redu...

How to achieve “green” desalination

Workshop explores ways to reduce or eliminate the carbon footprint of seawater desalination plants.

October 19, 2016

MIT researchers have developed a stretchy optical fiber in which they have injected multiple organic dyes (yellow, blue, and green regions). In addition to lighting up, the dyes act as a strain sensor, enabling researchers to quantify where and by how much a fiber has been stretched.

Stretchy optical fibers for implanting in the body

Biocompatible fibers could use light to stimulate cells or sense signs of disease.

October 17, 2016

In a time-lapse sequence, infrared imaging shows the temperature changes within a droplet of water as it moves across a treated silicon surface in response to temperature differences on that surface.

Temperature difference propels droplets

Method for moving fluids on a surface may find uses in condensers, microfluidics, and de-icing.

October 14, 2016

MIT researchers have found that interactions between electrons and heat-carrying particles called phonons can play a significant role in preventing heat dissipation in microelectronic devices.

Electron-phonon interactions affect heat dissipation in computer chips

Study shows particle collisions may explain overheated circuits, improve thermoelectric devices.

October 12, 2016

“We want to see, in the next five years or so, the amount of time you need to search for parking spot in a city drop from around 35 to 40 minutes, to less than five minutes,” says Smarking co-founder Wen Sang PhD ’14.

Optimizing parking in the busiest places

Data-analytics platform helps parking managers meet driver demand in high-traffic areas.

October 12, 2016

Researchers have developed a novel way to test tumors for drug susceptibility. They successfully tested this approach with a very aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme and a type of blood cancer, pictured here in dark purple, known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

A new strategy for choosing cancer drugs

Device can predict tumor responses by measuring cell growth after drug exposure.

October 10, 2016

To demonstrate the supercapacitor's ability to store power, the researchers modified an off-the-shelf hand-crank flashlight (the red parts at each side) by cutting it in half and installing a small supercapacitor in the center, in a conventional button battery case, seen at top. When the crank is turned to provide power to the flashlight, the light continues to glow long after the cranking stops, ...

New kind of supercapacitor made without carbon

Energy storage device could deliver more power than current versions of this technology.