Mechanical Engineering

The Mechanical Engineering team within the Harwell Oxford Campus is project based, with projects varying in time from a few days to many years. The larger projects are usually collaborations with other research institutes e.g. CERN (the European Particle Physics Centre), and the hardware may be built anywhere in the world. Our Mechanical project managers can handle all aspects from planning and scheduling, through financial management to health and safety e.g. CDM Regulations in order to deliver a project to specification within an ISO 9000 QA Framework.

We have mechanical design offices using up to date CAD software where ideas and concepts are developed into working designs. We use analysis early in the project to check out structural, thermal, vibration or CFD issues with appropriate FEA software. Completing projects requires both our in-house or external manufacturing services followed by assembly and commissioning skills.

Our large pool of mechanical engineers across our sites has extensive and varied experience from many years of collaborative project work with international partners, and can deliver solutions to challenging newprojects.

We have done extensive mechanical work on three of the LHC detectors:

• ATLAS
• CMS
• LHCb

The MICE project prototypes techniques for a future neutrino factory. Our work on Advanced LIGO could help detect the first gravity waves, while the T2K experiment target uses an excellent STFC mechanical design. The 4K Helical undulator relies on accurate engineering to produce its highly uniform field.

Please open the Mechanical Engineering overview (PDF - 5907kB - link opens in a new window) document to learn more about mechanical engineering projects at STFC. Alternatively, browse our website or contact us to find out more about our current projects and expertise.