School V Mechanical Engineering and Transport Systems

© TU Berlin/ Dahl

By bringing together the disciplines of mechanical engineering, transport systems and psychology, School V "Mechanical Engineering and Transport Systems" offers its students a unique combination of education and research in the engineering sciences. Our scientific endeavors serve to scrutinize complex systems in terms of their social, technical, ecological and economic components. This is the basis of our School’s leitmotiv: putting the individual person at the center of technological systems.

Areas of research expertise include flow acoustics, and structural acoustics, the interaction of man and technology, mobility and sustainable transport systems, as well as the origins of technological systems. An additional area of focus lies in the development of a so-called "digital factory". This includes production technology systems that are capable of responding to a wide variety of different customer requirements. Prototypes for new types of urban transport vehicles are conceived at our School and implemented by partners in the automotive industry. Efficient and sustainable products and processes are an additional goal of our research and development endeavors.

Our engineers cooperate closely with psychologists in the broad field of human-machine-systems to promote humane working conditions in a technological world. The security of these systems is especially important whenever collaboration between man and machine breaks down, thus posing great risks in operating rooms or in air traffic control towers for example. Research and training in this subject area are closely linked in the context of our interdisciplinary Master’s program "Human Factors", the only one of its kind in all of Germany.

In addition to considerable funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG), European Union and federal ministries, our direct and project-specific cooperation with partners in industry and business is also an important part of what we do. For example, we took part in the joint development of the monorail train Transrapid and the large passenger plane A 380. The TU Berlin also maintains numerous partnerships in industry in the fields of aviation and astronautics. This field of research with its long tradition at the TU currently emphasizes the development of so-called pico satellites, a field of research in which the TU Berlin has played a leading international role. Together with other research facilities, the TU Berlin has helped to bring a total of seven satellites into orbit.

The School’s strengths also lie in its close networking and consistent setting of priorities. It is actively cooperating in two specialized fields of research, one graduate school, four research networks and six primary areas of university research.

A hallmark of our School is its close interconnecting of research and training endeavors, in addition to its consistently praxis-oriented curriculum. Our graduates are thus highly sought after and highly qualified specialists, both in Germany and abroad and this also explains the great appeal of subjects such as Transport Systems, Computer Sciences in Mechanical Engineering, or the Master’s program Global Production Engineering. Five of the six course program profiles are unique in all of Germany.