The Ralph G. Anderson Building was completed in 2002 and is home to the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and College of Engineering Administration. It contains nearly 60,000 square feet of usable space for graduate research and undergraduate education and includes instructional labs, research facilities, computer labs, a student commons area, classrooms, a student career/resource center, a recruitment office, a digital media/communication studio, faculty and administrative offices. 

Labs in Ralph G. Anderson Building

Basement

• Machine Shop: supports the college of engineering with a wide range of fabrication services
• Combustion Research Lab: Experimental facility for fundamental studies in combustion and boiling
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Lab: used for developing and testing of fixed-wing and rotorcraft unmanned vehicles
• Vibro-acoustics Lab: Hemi-anechoic chamber used for the measurement of sound and related quantities. The lab can accommodate large systems including vehicles
• Flow Visualization Lab/Wind Tunnel: Includes large wind tunnel for boundary layer experiments, tow tunnel for scaled experiments in water and related instrumentation
• Dynamics Systems and Controls Lab: Used to obtain static and dynamic characteristics of systems and for testing of multi-system controls
• Bearings and Seals Lab: Supports the design, control and simulation of advanced bearing and sealing systems
• Radiation Sciences Lab: Experimental facility for studies of plasma systems and high-temperature plasma/material interactions
• Smart Materials Lab: contains tensile test machines and associated instrumentation for measuring properties of engineering materials
• ME Undergraduate Lab: Instructional laboratory for student experiments with heavy equipment

First Floor

• Student Commons: centrally located in the building and provides space for student study and social interaction. Is designed for flexibility so that it can be used for college and alumni social functions
• Workstation and Commons Computer Labs (4): provides computers available for student use including specialized software for ME courses

Second Floor

• Graduate Student Offices and Computational Labs: Several labs arranged for use by students whose research is primarily computational including FEA and CFD applications with access to the universities supercomputer system
• The Innovation Center: Makerspace for all students in the college to design and fabricate projects
• Engineering Workstation Lab: provides space for the instruction of students in modern computing software and is available to students when not used for instruction
• RFID Lab: Experimental lab for studies of radio frequency identification systems

Third Floor

• Undergraduate Instrumentation Lab: Used for the course on principles and application of instrumentation for engineering applications
• Undergraduate Systems Lab: Contains facilities for the second undergraduate course in experimentation involving mechanical engineering systems
• Senior Design Lab: Houses workspace for the Senior Design Course (ME412) in which student teams solve design problems from manufacturing companies and national student design competitions
• Optical Diagnostics Lab: Experimental facility for laser-based and other optical imaging measurements applied to combustion and fluid systems
• Technology Development Research Labs: Flexible space for bench-size experiments related to industrial research, including combustion, painting technology and surface appearance
• Biosystems and Cell Mechanics Lab: Provides a unique research space to apply physical and engineering principles to solve problems in bio-material science and develop new bio-technology
• Advanced Materials Lab: Used for materials research and education