Shared Facilities
The Aerospace Engineering Department is located in the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Building, a 100,000 square-foot complex that includes classrooms, teaching laboratories and research labs as well as faculty and staff offices.
The department also partially occupies four other research buildings; the wind tunnel building (20,000 Sq ft), high-vacuum pumping station (4000 sq ft), power house (1000 sq ft) and the PEPL lab (5000 sq ft). Research facilities in the building(s) include:
- A collection of wind tunnels that can test from micro air vehicles to models generating hundreds of pounds of lift and from very low-speed flight to above Mach 4 (Supersonic tunnels are in the wind tunnel building)
- A laboratory for plasmadynamics and electric propulsion, where full-scale tests can be run at millionths of a Torr (PEPL lab on Green Road)
- A composites laboratory with facility for mechanical testing of materials, vacuum and heating chambers for testing in controlled environments, high speed imaging of cracks and instrumentation for non-destructive evaluation.
- A laboratory for autonomous aerospace systems
- Explosion resistant high bay research labs
- Aero Learning Center for students
- A laboratory for the design, development and deployment of small satellites, the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL)
To schedule a tour of our facility, see our Visit Us page.
Aero Machine Shop
Equipment in the shop includes; lathes, mills, vertical band saw, horizontal band saw, welding equipment, large variety of hand tools for metalworking, grinder. The shop is operated by a professional fabricator that maintains and organizes the large professional machine and composite shop, with a very wide technical ability to:
- Plan, lay-out and build experimental subassemblies and prototype instruments and accessories for research projects and instructional labs.
- Review engineering specifications, drawings and sketches and creates special tools or fittings to build instruments.
- Apply advanced skill in repair or modification to existing instrumentation and equipment.
- Consult regularly with student teams concerning the design and fabrication of large team projects.
Duderstadt Center’s Fabrication Studio
The Duderstadt Center’s Fabrication Studio provides the UM community access to resources one would need to transform ideas into physical reality. You will find work surfaces, hand tools, several types of 3D printers, a laser cutter, a small CNC printed circuit board cutter, 3D scanners, and electronics workbenches ready to handle a variety of activities. Learn More
Great Lakes Slurm HPC Cluster
The Great Lakes Slurm cluster is a new, campus-wide computing cluster that will serve the broad needs of researchers across the university. The Great Lakes HPC Cluster has replaced Flux, the shared research computing cluster that currently serves over 300 research projects and 2,500 active users.
The Great Lakes HPC Cluster is available to all researchers on campus for simulation, modeling, machine learning, data science, genomics, and more. The platform provides a balanced combination of computing power, I/O performance, storage capability, and accelerators. Learn More
STUDENT SHOP
Machine shop includes several drill presses and vertical saws, cut-off saw, sheet metal brake, grinders, sanders, punches, hand tools, table saw, cnc router, cnc foam cutter. The shop is maintained by a Senior Technician staff member.
Wilson Student Team Project Center
The Wilson Student Team Project Center empowers student teams by providing a facility in which they can experience hands-on development and fabrication, enhance engineering theories, and allow members to use practical application of knowledge. The Wilson Center furnishes groups with a unique opportunity to interact with one another, share ideas, and showcase their projects. Learn More
Meaningful Places: The Wilson Center
Wind Tunnels
The University of Michigan Department of Aerospace Engineering can boast among its many resources ten wind tunnels for instructional and research work. These tunnels are run by the Aerodynamics and Propulsion, which consists of a closely integrated group of professors, technicians and students within the Aerospace Department. The function of this group is to conduct experimental and theoretical research, teach lecture and lab courses, and to guide PhD theses. The research interests of the group include a wide range of fluid dynamic, combustion and propulsion problems, much of which is based on wind tunnel experimentation. Learn More