Laboratories
Explore the eight specialized labs within our Mechanical Engineering department, designed to enrich your academic journey while you pursue your degree. These advanced facilities offer a range of resources, including computational clusters, CNC machines, composites labs, wind tunnels, and more, fostering hands-on experiences to amplify your engineering skills and academic growth.
The Mechanical Engineering Design Center supports the computational needs of students taking upper division (300, 400, 500 level) courses in Mechanical Engineering and provides a focused working environment for group activities. This 3000 square foot facility has three distinct areas - a high-end computational cluster of 16 PC workstations, a cluster of 24 networked PC workstations, and a group study area.
This laboratory is composed of a CNC Machining Laboratory, an Engine Test Cell, and a Senior Design Project Center. The following machining equipment are housed in the CNC Lab: Haas CNC VF-4 mill, ST-20 lathe, Haas CNC mill TM1, HS70 electric discharge machine (EDM), and a Z400 rapid prototyping machine. The machining equipment is used to support student design projects, including senior design, and graduate research projects. Conventional machining equipment, as well as MIG and TIG welders, are available in this lab.
The Keck Composites Lab facilitates a place for a composites laboratory class to take place, and a place where students can come and make composite components for their student and research projects. The lab allows students to learn many fundamental hands-on skills relating to creating their own molds, laying up composite parts, and post-cure processing (machining, drilling, and cutting). Students can do wet and prepreg layups with the use of a vacuum pump, oven and/or autoclave.
This laboratory supports the Autonomous Intelligent Vehicle senior project; all design and construction for this project takes place in this laboratory. Students analyze and design a system, size components, select sensors, measure signals, build the drive circuitry, test the system, develop the software, and finally test and tune the control system.
JD 1608A contains most of the equipment used to support ME 491. The equipment includes a centrifugal fan test bed, a centrifugal pump test bed, a pipe flow rack, a refrigeration cycle, a Rankine steam cycle, a process control demonstration unit, and a pneumatics actuator system. A major upgrade to this laboratory took place recently with the addition of several modern equipment.
This laboratory supports ME 335 Mechanical Measurements and ME 435 Mechatronics courses. The laboratory has 10 workstations and a seating area for approximately 20 students. The equipment includes an 8 channel A/D board for data acquisition along with signal conditioning modules for accommodating a variety of sensor types.
The Wind Tunnel Laboratory houses a closed circuit subsonic wind tunnel with a 4 square foot, atmospheric pressure test section, capable of speeds from 50 to 200 miles per hour. The tunnel includes a force balance and data acquisition unit to measure lift, drag, and pitching moment on various models. This tunnel is used by students in ME 491, as well as students studying special topics related to senior design and Masters projects.
Systems Engineering Research Laboratory, also known as SERL, is a research facility within Cal State Northridge geared towards students with interests in engineering and robotics. Our mission as SERL members is to improve the performance, safety, and efficiency of human-centered systems through innovative use of systems engineering analysis, human factors engineering, and information technology.