DOCTORAL DEGREE

Students who were admitted into a doctoral program by the Department of Ocean Engineering, including Ocean Engineering (OE), Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME), Oceanographic Engineering (13W), and Ocean Systems Management (13B), prior to January 1, 2005, when the Department of Ocean Engineering merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, have the option to follow the original requirements of the program, which are set forth in the following pages.

The following requirements have been written with the underlying philosophy that (a) the doctoral candidate has displayed, early in his or her graduate education, a strong background in the fundamentals of the appropriate field; (b) prior to the commencement of the student's thesis research, he or she has attained an extensive in-depth competence in the field of specialty; and (c) it is in the best interest of both the student and the Institute that this program be completed without undue delay.

Special cases will inevitably arise that, while being consistent with the above philosophy, are not permitted under the departmental requirements; in such cases, the student should consult first with his/her faculty advisor who, with the consent of the area faculty, may allow exceptions to the following regulations. In addition, the Institute requirements for doctoral degrees are outlined by the Graduate Student’s Office: http://web.mit.edu/gso/gpp/index.html .

GENERAL EXAMINATION - PART I

Information on the ME Part I Exams. Information regarding Part I Exams for Grandfathered Ocean Engineering students follows.  

The first stage of the doctoral examinations is intended to measure the student’s ability in fundamentals and determine whether a student has the potential to develop the depth of understanding and degree of originality necessary for the successful completion of a doctoral program.

Note: A student becomes a Doctoral candidate after he or she passes the Part I exams.

Part I must be successfully completed within two years of the student's date of registering in the Department as a full-time graduate student; it may be taken only once. The exams are open to any MIT graduate student currently registered in the Ocean Engineering Department with a cumulative rating of 4.0 or above, who has completed CALCULUS: 18.075,18.076, 18.086, or 18.085 with a grade of A or B. The examinations are given once per year during the early part of January.

Students who wish to take the examinations must sign up at the Center for Ocean Engineering, room 5-228, on or before the deadline specified in the current exam schedule. Students should provide a draft copy of an abstract (less than one page) of their research oral at the same time that they sign up. See research orals for more details. A waiver of any of these rules requires the approval of Department Faculty, pursuant to a petition by the student. Students should check with the Student Administration Office at the earliest possible opportunity to ensure that all eligibility requirements have been met.

There are three parts to the Part I examination, described in the following section, all of which must be taken by candidates for any of the doctoral degrees.

Area Written Examinations: address the diverse background and research directions of the students and will concentrate on fundamental knowledge in each area that all doctoral candidates must demonstrate familiarity in. They consist of two exams to be taken by all doctoral candidates. They will be designed to test the student's knowledge of first principles in two of the following three broad subject areas:

Each exam is three hours long and the candidates will be allowed to answer a subset of all questions in each exam.

Area Oral Examinations: are designed to test the student's familiarity with the application of basic principles in 8 fields of study grouped as follows:

Students will select two of the eight areas. However, they must not select two areas in the same group (row), ie. Acoustics and Signals & Systems would not be allowed.

Students will be asked to arrive 30 minutes prior to their exam. They will be given a room to prepare and material relevant to the exam. Once the exam begins, students will be given one hour to cover both topics. One examiner for each of the two areas will be present for the entire examination, and the student should allot a portion of their time to answer any questions the examiners have.

Research Oral Exams 2 Units (28.57%)

In the research oral examination, students will present a research study which may be complete or in-progress to a committee of faculty and staff members.

Students should provide a draft copy of an abstract (less than one page) of their research oral at the same they sign up to take the examination. A finalized copy of the abstract, signed by their advisor must be handed in to the Center for Ocean Engineering in Room 5-228. Deadlines for drafts and abstracts are listed in the exam schedule below. Students are free to discuss their abstracts with their advisors. Faculty members will not comment on actual presentation material but can give general advice on the purpose of the examination and how the student might organize his/her presentation. Students are encouraged to practice their presentation with fellow students, but faculty and senior research staff, including postdocs, should not participate in rehearsals.

The examination is of approximately one hour, during which time the student will be asked to make a twenty (20) minute formal presentation of the results of individual research or study. This presentation will then be followed by questions, which will not only bear specifically on the research reported but also on the fundamentals relevant to the research topic.

It should be emphasized that the level of the research reported will be weighed in relation to the academic progress of each candidate. It is not the intention of this examination to give advantage to students with completed or nearly completed SM theses. Presentations may be based on special projects, term papers, undergraduate research opportunities projects, and outside employment, as well as graduate thesis research.

Exam Grading

• PASS
• FAIL/PERMISSION TO RETAKE
• FAIL/MAY PETITION TO RETAKE BUT NOT RECOMMENDED

CALCULUS Functions of complex variables, calculus of residues, ordinary differential equations, initial-value and boundary problems. Expansions in series of orthogonal functions, Fourier series. Vector calculus, gradient of functions, divergence and Stokes vector theorems. Solutions of the Laplace, wave, and heat equations by separation of variables and the application of Laplace and Fourier transforms. Required Subjects: 18.075 and 18.076, 18.086, or 18.085 A or B grade

SUBJECTS FOR AREA WRITTEN EXAMS

Hydrodynamics: Equations governing conservation of mass and momentum. Similitude and model testing. Ideal vortical and potential flows including the concepts of lift and added mass. Real (viscous) laminar and turbulent flows including the concepts of boundary layers and Reynolds stresses. Rudiments of linearized free-surface waves, including wave kinematics, superposition, dispersion, energy density and group velocity, and the effect of finite water depth.

Recommended Subject: 13.021

Mechanics: Principles of conservation of energy and linear and angular momentum. Rigid body kinematics and dynamics. Collisions of rigid bodies. Linear vibration of lumped mass systems, vibration of strings, axial and torsional vibration of rods, bending vibration of beams. Elementary beam theory, buckling and energy methods of computing load-deflection relationships for structures. Stress-strain relationships.

Recommended Subjects: Structures: 13.10J; Vibrations: 13.801J or 16.20; Dynamics: 2.032

Probability and Random Processes: Probability axioms, random variables, moments, transformation of random variables, characteristic functions, repeated trials, random variables, Gaussian random variables, Bayes Rule, random processes, second moment characterizations of random processes with correlation functions and power spectral density.

Recommended Subjects: Probability: 6.431; Random Processes: 13.42

SUBJECTS FOR AREA ORAL EXAMS

Acoustics: Sound Waves. Wave equation and its general solutions. Reflection from a plane fluid interface. Directivity in radiation (wavelength-size effects). Ray acoustics. Modal analysis of an isospeed channel. Scattering.

Recommended Subjects: 13.851 and 13.852

Dynamics & Vibrations: Kinematics and dynamics of rigid bodies in two and three-dimensional motions. Formulation of equations of motion by momentum principles and Lagrange methods. Concepts and applications of conservation laws including momentum and energy. Free and forced vibration of lumped and continuous systems, including strings, beams, and rods. Response of damped mechanical systems to harmonic, periodic, and transient excitation. Modal analysis and matrix formulation of vibration problems. Solution for natural frequencies and mode shapes. Simple concepts of wave propagation, including wavelength, frequency, wavenumber, phase and group velocity, reflection, and transmission.

Recommended Subjects: 13.801J and 2.032

Structural Mechanics: Concept of stress and strain. Stress equilibrium, strain-displacement relations and idealized material behavior. Principle stresses, Mohr's circles elementary failure and plasticity criteria. Simple bending theory of beams, effect of shear. Strain energy, total potential energy equilibrium via the energy method. Rayleigh-Ritz method. Castigliano theorems. Principle of virtual work. Moderately large deflections of beams and buckling of columns. Plastic buckling.

Recommended Subjects: 13.10J

Hydrodynamics: Laminar and turbulent boundary layer theory. Ideal flows in two and three dimensions. Lifting-surface theory for steady, unsteady, and cavitating hydrofoils. Water waves, loads, and motions of bodies in waves; ship wave resistance. Hydrodynamics of slender bodies. Application to floating and submerged vessels.

Recommended Subjects: 13.021

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics: Equations for mass, momentum, and energy, and their application in fixed and rotating systems. Vorticity and potential vorticity. Geophysical boundary layers. Fluid-density effects, including density-driven flows. Scales and scaling of oceanic flows. Oceanic circulation.

Recommended Subjects: 12.800

Signals and Systems: Time domain concepts for linear, time-invariant systems, such as impulse response and convolution. Integral transform techniques for linear systems, including continuous and discrete Fourier, Laplace, and Hilbert transforms. Sampling theory and reconstruction. Modulation and demodulation of signals. Analog and digital filtering. Transfer functions for systems with linear feedback, including concepts such as open- and closed-loop gain and phase response.

Recommended Subjects: 6.003

Management of Ocean Systems: Ability to identify, analyze, and solve management problems. Synthesize complex management situations, setting priorities among factors, applying fundamental concepts of accounting, finance, marketing, and corporate strategy, handling quantitative and qualitative aspects, integrating the various factors with technology and policy considerations.

Recommended Subjects: 13.68 and 13.69

Economics of Ocean Systems: General microeconomic concepts and analysis, with applications in ocean systems management, such as the economics of principal ocean transportation markets. Supply and demand analysis, producer and consumer theory, pricing in perfectly competitive and monopoly markets, economic efficiency. Structure, conduct, and performance of the charter and liner shipping markets. Elements of international trade theory.

Recommended Subjects: 13.661