The Institute of Engineering Science UB RAS was founded in 1988. For more than three decades the Institute staff has solved a wide range of scientific and industrial problems in the interests of the developing industry of the Ural region.

At present, the institute is solving such interdisciplinary problems in mechanics, engineering science, control and computer science as the physics and mechanics of deformation and fracture of structured continuous materials, including those used under extreme conditions; safety, service life and survivability of machines and complex engineering systems; the mathematical and physical modeling of advanced structures and materials; specialized computation software and electronics for real-time systems.

The Institute is provided with balanced park of scientific, experimental and production equipment. A distinctive feature of the institute’s machinery is the availability of both state-of-the-art analytical and testing equipment and specially designed installations necessary for solving most of the production problems of mechanical engineering.

Besides the research financed from the federal budget (base funding), the institute does research under programs of different levels, state contracts, grants of scientific foundations, as well as under agreements with more than 25 domestic industrial enterprises.

The institute annually organizes and holds all-Russia conferences on Resource and Diagnostics of Materials and Structures and Mechanics of Microinhomogeneous Materials and Fracture, schools-conferences for young scientists. Since 2015 the institute has been issuing the international electronic scientific journal entitled Diagnostics, Resource and Mechanics of materials and structures. The journal publishes scientific papers reporting the results of original basic and applied research on mechanics, materials science, and nondestructive testing.

Since 2003 the institute has had the Plastometriya UB RAS multiple-access center, which renders technical assistance to research institutions and industrial enterprises in conducting various tests. The equipment of the center is used in the education and training of specialists taught at the B. N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University in the subjects of Materials Science in Mechanical Engineering and Metal Forming. The Plastometriya center includes three research and engineering divisions:

- testing center;

- laboratory of nondestructive testing;

- laboratory of volume and surface deformation.

The machinery of the Plastometriya center consists of equipment and instruments listed in the fixed assets of the Institute of Engineering Science, and it includes the following:

- equipment for mechanical and tribological testing;

- equipment for determining the composition and microstructure of materials, the roughness and condition of their surfaces;

- equipment for determining the physical characteristics and damage of materials by nondestructive techniques;

- processing equipment;

- sample preparation equipment.

The scientists of the institute have long-term cooperation with academic institutes of Belarus, do active research in collaboration with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; they are members of editorial boards of international journals and fellows of international scientific societies, make presentations at international conferences, and have papers published in foreign sources.

The main lines of research at the institute currently are as follows:

- mechanics of solids, structures and constructions, advanced materials and technologies;

- computer-aided systems for measurement, nondestructive testing of materials and diagnostics of machine service life;

- creation of elements of knoware, software, and hardware for systems of automatic control of complex objects;

        - mechanics and control of transportation and traction machines.