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Mechanical engineers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is physically possible in order to produce safer, cheaper, and more efficient machines and mechanical systems. Some technologies at the cutting edge of mechanical engineering are listed below.

Composites:

Composites or composite materials are a combination of materials which provide different physical characteristics than either material separately. Composite material research within mechanical engineering typically focuses on designing (and, subsequently, finding applications for) stronger or more rigid materials while attempting to reduce weight, susceptibility to corrosion, and other undesirable factors. Carbon fiber reinforced composites, for instance, have been used in such diverse applications as spacecraft and fishing rods.

Mechatronics:

Mechatronics is the synergistic combination of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and software engineering. The purpose of this interdisciplinary engineering field is the study of automata from an engineering perspective and serves the purposes of controlling advanced hybrid systems.

Nanotechnology:

At the smallest scales, mechanical engineering becomes nanotechnology and molecular engineering—one speculative goal of which is to create a molecular assembler to build molecules and materials via mechanosynthesis. For now this goal remains within exploratory engineering.

Finite Element Analysis:

This field is not new, as the basis of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or Finite Element Method (FEM) dates back to 1941. But evolution of computers has made FEM a viable option for analysis of structural problems. Many commercial codes such as ANSYS, Nastran and ABAQUS are widely used in industry for research and design of components.

Other techniques such as Finite Difference Method (FDM) and Finite Volume Method (FVM) are employed to solve problems relating heat and mass transfer, fluid flows, fluid surface interaction etc.