Types of Engineering
Engineering has various categories. We can find around two hundred types of engineering all over the world. It would be quite difficult to discuss so many types of engineering at a time. So, you will have an idea of the major types of engineering here.
Major Types of Engineering
Engineering can be divided into seven major types:
- Electrical Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Chemical Engineering
- Engineering Sciences
- Engineering Management
- Mechanical Engineering
- Geotechnical Engineering
List of Major and Interdisciplinary Engineering Branches
Each of the types is explained below.
Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering can be divided into six subcategories:
1. Computer Engineering: Computer engineers determine how much information can be stored on a hard drive. They also find out what instructions a computer requires for turning on and moving on information around. They can design cables linking computers together for forming networks. They can develop devices like modems, printers, digital cameras, and scanners.
2. Communications Engineering: Communications engineers plan, design, analyze, implement, operate, test, manage, and maintain communications systems and networks. They are the key role players in the continuing development of the internet and related technologies.
3. Electrical Engineering: Electrical engineers plan, supervise, and develop the production, operation, and maintenance of machines, equipment, and systems engaged in electricity production and supply. They may design and plan power stations, produce grids for electricity distribution for towns and cities, develop new technologies for listening to the radio, cooking food, washing clothes, and so on. They are also making important contributions to television, telecommunications, and information technology.
4. Electronic Systems: Electronics engineers plan, develop, maintain, and test electronic systems and parts in computers, navigation, communications, entertainment, and industry.
5. Electromechanical Systems: Electromechanical systems engineers concentrate on each device which makes mechanical and electrical systems function together. They often work for the power production, airline, or automotive industries.
6. Software Engineering: Software engineers may coordinate with computer analysts for developing software solutions for particular needs. They may draw up complete design documentation consisting of diagrams and charts outlining how the software functions. They also create instructions for the installation of software and test software on different operating systems and computer platforms.
Civil Engineering
Civil engineering can be categorized into four subdivisions:
1. Civil Engineering: Civil engineers are engaged in the planning and building of bridges, highways, tunnels, hospitals, schools, airports, water treatment facilities, sewage systems, and other buildings.
2. Building Engineering: Building engineers are engaged in designing and building new constructions like homes, hospitals, and museums and, ensuring the safety and health of the constructed environment. They also retrofit and renovate older buildings for present needs. They also design the systems making a building’s working and living space comfortable.
3. Constructions Engineering: Construction engineers schedule construction projects, ensure necessary materials and equipment are on the site, test and evaluate constructed facilities to ensure they meet all standards.
4. Water Resource Engineering: Water resource engineers monitor water quality, manage plants for water treatment for ensuring appropriate water filtration, develop new technologies like desalinization equipment for making salty water drinkable for coastal communities.
Chemical Engineering
Chemical engineering can be divided under eight subcategories:
1. Biological and Biosystems: Biological and Biosystems engineers manage machinery, structures, labor, energy, water, land, resource and waste variables associated with the efficient production of processes and products to meet human needs. They develop new sources of medicines like insulin, find new uses for natural fibers, study ways to convert woodchips, garbage, and grass into automobile fuel, and develop sensor systems for detecting nutrients in crops.
2. Agricultural Engineering: Agricultural engineers concentrate on generating ways for improving food supply and farms for the future. They design and develop new machinery to harvest crops. They develop irrigation systems for people in dry areas. They plan and design structures for animals, plants, and crop storage.
3. Chemical: Chemical engineers are engaged in working for different companies who use chemicals for manufacturing various things for our daily use. They develop unscratchable plastics for Nintendo game systems and PlayStation, create fade-resistant dyes for clothing and jeans, invent new dyes for coloring toothpaste, analyze materials for sports equipment, and ensure that factories don’t pollute the air, water or soil.
4. Food Engineering: Food engineers are involved in monitoring and enhancing the hygienic way of manufacturing, processing, packaging and delivering of food items. They develop ways for preserving food longer, invent new technologies for cooking like high-powered bread ovens, and improve vehicles for food transportation such as ice cream trucks.
5. Environmental Engineering: Environmental engineers perform very hard for finding ways to keep the forests green, the air pure, and the lakes clean. They monitor mercury levels in ponds and fish, invent non-polluting, alternative energy technologies such as wind power, find ways for reducing toxic emissions from large factories, and plan methods for cleaning up oil spills in the oceans quickly.
6. Forestry Engineering: Forestry engineers play a crucial role in forest resources’ effective management. They are involved in managing tree harvesting, designing flood run-off systems and logging roads, and ensure a positive impact of forestry activities on local communities.
7. Plastics Engineering: Plastics engineers are engaged in designing high-performing soles for athletic shoes, figuring out the way to mold and shape plastics for bodies of cars and other vehicles, and designing new plastics that won’t become brittle in very cold weather.
8. Materials Engineering: Material engineers apply science to creating effective new materials by manipulating the molecular and atomic structures of components. They produce flame-resistant cloth for racing suits, develop high definition screens for computers, design lighter balls for golf, and invent Kevlar for skis, bullet-proof vests, and snowboards.
Engineering Sciences
Engineering sciences can be categorized under three subdivisions:
1. Engineering Physics: An engineering physicist can help in designing new systems for wireless communications, researching ways to produce power applying nuclear fusion, and designing solar wings space vehicles (deep).
2. Engineering Chemistry: Engineering chemists design new rubber for use in cold weather, develop pharmaceuticals, and research ways for keeping lipstick on lips for a longer time.
3. Engineering Math: Professionals engaged in engineering math analyze the mathematical aspects of communications networks and computer, study the aircraft’s aerodynamics, and devise mathematical computer models allowing people to observe the way of water’s movement in a river.
Engineering Management
Engineering management can be divided into four subcategories:
1. Production: Production engineers concentrate on the smooth and efficient running of goods production. They are engaged in developing robots for painting cars and other vehicles, finding out the way of packaging cookies so that they won’t crumble, researching how quickly pencils can be produced in a pencil factory and the like.
2. Industrial/ Manufacturing: Industrial/Manufacturing engineers design, organize, manage, and supervise the operations of industries for ensuring safe, effective, and economical use of people, energy and materials.
3. Integrated/ Unified: Engineers involved in this sector interact and work with others in different disciplines based on their specific industry. They work hard to ensure that a project’s parts come together properly to formulate the necessary function.
4. Systems: Systems engineers are engaged in working with clients for determining their actual needs, giving demonstrations of and presentations on products, providing informal advice on which products may fulfill customers’ requirements, writing a formal document like proposals, and assisting sales-people with the preparation and execution of a complete sales strategy.
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineering can be categorized under five subdivisions:
1. Automotive Engineering: Automotive engineers design new kinds of aerodynamic Formula-1 racing cars, develop engines that reduce emissions of greenhouse gas and improve fuel efficiency and plan the way to dismantle, shred, and flatten older vehicles for recycling the metals to build new cars.
2. Aerospace Engineering: Aerospace engineers design and develop extraordinary technologies like helicopters, satellites, supersonic jets, space shuttles, and rockets.
3. Mechanical Engineering: Mechanical engineers research, build and develop machines such as CD players, Snowmobiles, Nintendo and Sega game wear, Off-road vehicles, robots for manufacturing plants, and rocket engines.
4. Biomedical Engineering: Biomedical and biomechanical engineers design artificial pacemakers and hearts, create lifelike prosthetic limbs for better freedom and mobility improving glucose monitors, improve incubators for premature babies, and develop new physiotherapy technologies.
5. Ocean/Naval Engineering: Ocean engineers/ naval architectures apply the scientific principles of design and engineering to everything engaged with the ocean, and other large sources of water. They design strong ships to survive giant waves and typhoons. They supervise the deposition of fiber optic cables across the ocean floor. They also create underwater vehicles like submarines and others.
Geotechnical Engineering
Geotechnical engineering can be divided under eight subcategories:
1. Geological: Geological engineers recognize and attempt to solve problems related to rock, groundwater, and soil. They design structures below and in the ground applying the principles of earth science.
2. Geomatics: Geomatics engineers develop technologies for studying weather patterns and forecast upcoming storms, search and rescue, help to identify new locations of unused fuel reservoirs, and map traditional territories.
3. Gas: Gas engineers design and manage gas recovery from different reservoirs.
4. Mineral: Mineral engineers forecast potential sources of the mineral, evaluate the best technique for extracting mineral resources from a particular site, and coordinate testing and laboratory analysis of mineral samples.
5. Mining: Mining engineers manage the economic and safe extraction of earth’s mineral resources and also their effective, safe, and economic processing and marketing.
6. Petroleum: Petroleum engineers are involved in planning and managing the recovery of gas and oil from petroleum reservoirs.
7. Oil: Oil engineers design and supervise oil wells’ development, find out the way to clean-up oil spills and other environmental contamination because of extracting gas and oil from the earth, and also develop how to remove oil from the tar sands.
8. Metallurgical: Metallurgical engineers research, develop, and control processes applied in metal extraction and refining.