ME Annual Report 2009 - 2010

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am pleased to share with you our department’s annual report highlighting the activities of the past academic year. Currently, the Mechanical Engineering department is home to 24 tenured and tenure track faculty as well as three professors in residence.

The department’s research portfolio has grown to $22.2 million with this year’s research expenditure of $4.7 million. Between July 2009 and June 2010, faculty received new research grants and contracts with a total value of $9.36 million. In this same period the Mechanical Engineering faculty published 90 journal articles and contributed 102 conference publications or presentations. Faculty members were inventors on two patents, and served on the editorial boards of 16 major journals and on 26 conference organizing committees.

In the 2009–2010 academic year the department’s undergraduate program had an enrollment of 462 students. A total of 120 bachelor’s degrees were conferred. The capstone Senior Design courses featured 37 senior design projects sponsored by 27 companies. The

department has increased its support for undergraduate students engaged in summer research in various research laboratories in the department.

Our graduate program has seen an increase of full-time Ph.D. students, with a total graduate student enrollment of 115 students. A large number of projects funded by fed-eral and industry grants and contracts continue to support our graduate program. Our recent Ph.D. graduates have landed excellent jobs in academia, government labs and industry. We have granted 17 M.S. and 5 Ph.D. degrees during the past academic year.

Major laboratory renovations were undertaken in order to improve our research and educational infrastructure. New laboratories for combustion and computational en-gineering were established with the latter housing high performance computing facilities. Additionally, we have upgraded our undergraduate teaching laboratories with improved facilities and equipment and are in the process of completely revising the undergraduate laboratory cours-es. The recently established Pratt & Whitney Center of Ex-cellence in the area of Advanced Diagnostics, Sensing and Control of Propulsion Systems continues to support many exciting research projects in our department. This center has extended its activities to include projects funded by the Hamilton Sundstrand division of UTC.

While I briefly touched upon some of the activities in the department over the past academic year, I welcome you to peruse this publication to learn more about our depart-ment.

With my best wishes,

Baki M. CetegenProfessor and Department Head

2University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering 1

from the DEPARTMENT HEAD

28 faculty members

24 tenured/tenure track faculty

3 professors-in-residence

1 instructor

115 graduate students

462 undergraduate students

90 journal articles published

102 conference papers published

98 active research projects

$4.7M in research expenditures

$22.2M in active research projects

$9.36M in new research awards

ME Undergraduate Enrollment

Ph.D. Enrollment

M.S. Enrollment

2009-2010 QUICK FACTS

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DoE13%

DEd4%

NIH12%

State 2%

Other 1%

DoD14%

NSF39%NASA

4%

Industry11%

Research Breakdown 2010

3University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering

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Yen-Lin Han joined the Mechanical En-gineering Department in January 2010 from the University of Southern Califor-nia, where she was a Lecturer from 2006

to 2009. She received her B.S. degree in Material Science and Engineering from National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan in 1993. She also received her M.B.A. degree in Gen-eral Management from California State University-Dominguez Hills, Carson in 1999, and attended California State University, Northridge for her M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from 1999 to 2001. She completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engi-neering in 2006 and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2008 from the University of Southern California. Her research interests include both experimental and computational aspects of thermal fluid transport phenomena in MEMS devices. She is currently focusing her research on nano-porous materials such as carbon nanotube membranes and aerogel in micro de-vices. She is a member of ASME.

NEW FACULTY, INNOVATION

Professor Dvorak joined our department as a research professor. He has been a faculty member at RPI prior to his engage-ment with our department. Prof. Dvorak,

a member of NAE, is an expert in the area of micromechanics of heterogeneous solids, composite materials and structures sub-jected to mechanical loads and phase transformations induced by thermal or inelastic deformations. His past experimental and theoretical research focused on plasticity, fracture and fatigue of fibrous metal matrix composites. His more recent work has been on optimized prestressed fibers in laminated shells and

plates, and on improvement of damage resistance of sandwich plates subjected to impact loads. Prof. Dvorak collaborates with Prof. Hanchen Huang of our department on various projects. Prof. Dvorak has been honored with numerous awards includ-ing the ASME Arpad Nadai Medal (1992), SES William Prager Medal (1994), Brown Engineering Alumni Medal (1999), ASME Daniel. C. Drucker Medal (2002), and the ASCE Theodore von Karman Medal (2006). He was elected a member of the Na-tional Academy of Engineering in 1995.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Professor Emeritus David (Ed) Crow is passionate about innovation and entre-preneurship. He has been teaching a se-nior level elective class on Entrepreneur-ship and Value Creation for the past five

years. This popular course exposes students to the processes in-volved from inception of an invention or an idea to generation of a path for successful business creation including various steps involved in business plan development, intellectual property protection and securing of venture capital funding. This non-traditional course allows our students to not only think about the ideas they develop during their engineering education but stimulates them to be entrepreneurs. Prof. Crow believes that the U.S. economy will only thrive by innovating new products and processes and by the entrepreneurial spirit of the new generation. He believes in it so much that he recently estab-lished the Crow Prize in Innovation and Entrepreneurship that will award $10,000 annually to a team or teams of students who compete in an Innovation Forum in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Prof. Crow was the Senior Vice President of Engi-neering at UTC-Pratt & Whitney prior to joining the Mechanical Engineering Department. He is a member of NAE.

Yen-Lin Han Assistant Professor-in-Residence

George Dvorak Research Professor


Prof. Chih-Jen SungRESEARCH PROFILE

biofuels research at the combustion diagnostics laboratory


Recent concerns over energy sustainability, energy security, and global warming have created a renewed push to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Drastic changes in the fuel constituents and operational characteristics of energy conver-sion systems are needed as the world transitions away from petroleum-derived fuels. The diversity of alternative fuels and the corresponding variation in their physical and chemical properties, coupled with simultaneous changes in the design/control strategies to improve efficiency and reduce emissions, pose immense technical challenges. One of these promising alternative fuels is bio-butanol, which has high energy content and is more compatible with conventional fuels and engines than ethanol. Prof. Sung and his group are investigating the combustion properties of bio-butanol, with special emphasis on the creation of experimental validation databases for ki-netics, thermochemistry, transport processes, and flame struc-ture through the application of advanced diagnostic methods. Using a Rapid Compression Machine, the ignition properties of butanol have been investigated at low-to-intermediate temperatures and high pressures important in many engines.

The results of these experiments (shown in the figure below) show that all previous kinetic models for butanol ignition strongly over-predict the ignition delays. In-depth analy-sis suggests that there are many reactions accounting for the disparity in the experimental and simulated results. The new experimental data will be used to develop an accu-rate, well-validated kinetic model suitable for flame and engine simulations.

Prof. George Lykotrafitis is investigating how the onset and progression of human diseases influence the biomechanical behavior of cells to support diagnosis and therapy. In particular, he is interested in the sickle cell disease and its pathophysi-ology, complications and therapy. He employs atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study the biomechanical behavior of erythrocytes in physiological conditions. He studies the elasticity and the cytoadhesion of erythrocytes from healthy individu-als and from patients with the sickle cell disease (SCD) and with the sickle cell trait. His experimental results show that the Young’s modulus of sickle cell trait erythrocytes is approximately three times higher than in normal cells while spe-cific adhesion proteins are over expressed on red blood cells from patients with the SCD compared to normal erythrocytes.

Prof. Lykotrafitis also develops coarse-grained models with high computational efficiency for simulating a variety of dynamic and topological problems involving biological membranes. He developed a parallel code that can be scaled up to thousands of processors to study the implications of cytoskeleton defects on the micromechanical behavior of abnormal erythrocytes such as spherocytes and el-liptocytes. He also developed a coarse-grain molecular dynamics (CGMD) model that represents a single polymerized hemoglobin S (HbS) fiber that allows him to study the interaction between two HbS fibers, and the fiber zippering process during heterogeneous fiber growth. The study of the interactions between the membrane of the entire cell and the network of HbS fibers will increase our un-derstanding of sickle cell disease, and contribute to improvements in treatment.

A normal cell is

pictured (left) with

a cell from SCD

(right)

Prof. George Lykotrafitis RESEARCH PROFILE

engineering cells

Prof. George Lykotrafitis and students

Anuhya Gottipati and Jamie Maciaszek.


“CAREER: The Role of Mobility in Antibody Aggregation,” Tai-Hsi Fan, National Science Foundation, 02/10-01/15, $400,000.

“Energy Frontier Research Center for Combustion Science,” Chih-Jen Sung, Department of Energy, 08/09-07/14, $900,000.

“MURI: Generation of Comprehensive Surrogate Kinetic Mod-els and Validation Database for Simulating Large Molecular Weight Hydrocarbon Fuels,” Chih-Jen Sung, Department of Defense / Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 08/09-04/12, $761,500.

“Comprehensive Chemical Kinetics of Conventional and Alter-native Jet Fuels for Aeropropulsion Combustion Modeling,” Chih-Jen Sung, NASA, 11/09-11/10, $105,000.

“Autoignition Chemistry of Gasoline Surrogates Relevant to HCCI Operating Conditions,” Chih-Jen Sung, National Sci-ence Foundation, 09/09-08/12, $299,999.

“Microchannel Thermo-catalytic Ignition for Advanced Mono- and Bipropellants,” Chih-Jen Sung, NASA / Plasma Process-es, Inc., 01/10-01/11, $40,000.

“Novel Thermal Energy Storage for Concentrating Solar Pow-er,” Amir Faghri, Theodore L. Bergman, and R. Pitchumani, De-partment of Energy, 09/09-06/12, $1,290,362.

“Adaptive Control Logic for Turbo-Fan Engines,” Chengyu Cao, Pratt & Whitney, 02/10-12/10, $45,000.

Adaptive Control for Fast Engine Response,” Chengyu Cao, “NASA / Pratt & Whitney, 04/10-12/10, $45,021.

“Adaptive Control for Air Management Systems,” Chengyu Cao and Jiong Tang, United Technologies Hamilton Sund-strand, 02/10-12/10, $91,691.

“Partially-Premixed Bluff-Body Flame Dynamics and Acoustic Coupling in Vitiated Flows,” Baki M. Cetegen and Michael W. Renfro, National Science Foundation, 06/10-05/13, $325,000.

“Dynamics of Bluff-Body Stabilized Premixed and Partially-Premixed Flames near Blowoff,” Baki M. Cetegen and M.W. Renfro, Pratt & Whitney, 01/10-12/10, $60,000.

“EFRC: Science Based Nano-Structure Design and Synthesis of Heterogeneous Functional Materials for Energy Systems,” Wilson K. S. Chiu, Department of Energy / University of Southern California, 08/09-07/14, $929,279.

“High Pressure Electrolyzer Membrane Mass Transport,” Wilson K. S. Chiu, UTC / Hamilton Sundstrand, 01/10-12/12, $239,663.

“FLEX Droplet Combustion Experiments in Microgravity,” Mun Y. Choi, NASA, 01/08-1/13, $550,000.

“GAANN in Sustainable Energy,” Mun Y. Choi, Department of Education, 7/09-7/12, $522,624.

“Energy and Nano-Electronics Program Development,” Mun Y. Choi, King Abdulaziz University, 7/09-6/10, $107,069.

“EFRI: Event Driven Sensing for Enterprise Reconfigurability and Optimization,” Robert Gao, National Science Founda-tion, 08/08-10/11, $400,102.

“Enhanced Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Combus-tion Visualization,” Robert Gao, Pratt & Whitney, 01/10-12/10, $52,000.

“Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Fluid-Air Visualiza-tion,” Robert Gao, Pratt & Whitney, 01/10-06/10, $45,000.

“Collaborative Research: Atomistic Mechanisms of Stabiliz-ing Oxide Nanoparticles in Oxide-dispersion Strengthened Structural Materials,” Hanchen Huang and J. Lian, National Science Foundation (DMR), 08/09-07/12, $497,000.

“Workshop on Atomistic Interfaces 2009 – Ionic Solids,” Hanchen Huang, Army Research Office, 07/09-04/10, $23,500.

“A Self-Consistent Multiscale Method for Modeling the Effects of Neutron Irradiation on the Mechanical Properties of BCC and FCC Metals,” Hanchen Huang and S. De, Department of Defense, Threat Reduction Agency, 06/09-05/12, $1,000,000.


SOME RECENT GRANTS AND CONTRACTS

“A New Characteristic Length Scale on Surfaces,” Hanchen Huang, National Science Foundation (CMMI), 07/09-06/12, $280,000.

“Computational Materials Science Network on Nuclear Materials,” Hanchen Huang, Department of Energy, Of-fice of Basic Energy Science, 09/09-04/10, $64,000.

“Composite Technologies,” Hanchen Huang and Eric Jordan, Hamilton Sundstrand, 01/10-12/10, $83,000.

“MRI: Development of a Gesture Based Virtual Reality Sys-tem for Research in Virtual Worlds,” Horea Ilies, National Science Foundation - Computer and Information Science and Engineering, 7/09-7/12, $782,039.

“Geometric Skeletons for Topologically Evolving Domains,” Horea Ilies, National Science Foundation - Civil, Mechani-cal and Manufacturing Innovation, Engineering Design and Innovation Program, 08/09-07/12, $319,933.

“SGER: A Mechanics Framework for the Analysis and Design of Protein Based Nano Machines,” Horea Ilies, Kazem Kazerounian, A. Anderson and P. Burkhard, National Science Foundation, 08/09-07/12, $325,108.

“Barrier Layers to Improve the Durability of Thermal Bar-rier Coatings,” Eric H. Jordan and M. Gell, Center for Sci-ence and Innovation, 05/09-05/11, $50,000.

“Thin, Dense Ceramic Layers To Improve Thermal Barrier Coating Performance, Durability and Reliability,” Eric H. Jordan and M. Gell, Office of Naval Research, 04/09-10/10, $50,000.

“New GK-12: Ingenuity Incubators Develop NSF Fellow Po-tential and Prepare Tech Students for Engineering,” Kazem Kazerounian, D. Cooper, Mun Y. Choi and R. Washington, National Science Foundation, 03/10-02/15, $2,721,405.

“Development of a Knowledge Based Expert System for Robotic Grinding,” Kazem Kazerounian, New Dimension Technologies Corporation, 08/09-07/14, $257,030.

“RET Site: The Joule Fellows – Teachers in Sustainable En-ergies Research Laboratories,” Kazem Kazerounian and Marcelle Wood, National Science Foundation, 05/09-04/12, $450,000.

“Device for Tooth Cleaning in the Elderly,” Shiva Kotha and R. Lalla, National Institute of Health, 08/09-07/11, $451,862.

“Device for Tooth Cleaning in the Disabled,” Shiva Kotha and John Enderle, National Science Foundation, 08/09-07/11, $220,000.

“Automated Reduction for Alternative Fuels,” Tianfeng Lu, Pratt & Whitney, 07/09-06/10, $61,000.

“Reduction of Detailed Mechanisms for Surrogate Fuels,” Tian-feng Lu, Princeton University / AFOSR, 11/08-11/10, $34,000.

“Predicting Structural Integrity of Naval Vessels Using a Bayesian Approach: Modeling and Practical Implemen-tations,” Kevin D. Murphy, Office of Naval Research, 05/09-05/11, $159,967.

“The Development of Control for Hybrid Projectiles,” Nejat Olgac, Department of Defense / Association of Research Libraries / University of Hartford, 06/10-12/10, $40,000.

“New Concepts in Fluidics and Cellular Mechanics for Con-trolled Microinjection,” Nejat Olgac and Tai-Hsi Fan, Na-tional Science Foundation, 08/07-07/11, $200,000.

“Swarm Behavior During Conflicts: From Biological to En-gineered Systems,” Nejat Olgac and E. Adams, Army Re-search Office, 08/07-07/11, $271,000.

“Development of Biomechanical Models for Analyzing Percutaneous Transvenous Mitral Annuloplasty,” Wei Sun, American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant, 01/09-12/12, $308,000.

“Biomechanical Study to Host Tissue-Implant Interactions in Minimally Invasive Aortic Valve Replacements,” Wei Sun, CT Department of Public Health, 07/09-02/11, $290,304.

“Efficient Probabilistic Approach Using Order Reduction and Hybrid Models – A New Paradigm for Structural Dy-namic Analysis,” Jiong Tang, National Science Foundation, 09/09-08/12, $200,000.

“Understanding and Controlling Variation Propagation in Pe-riodic Structures: From Geometry to Dynamic Response,” Jiong Tang, National Science Foundation, 06/09-05/12, $143,333.


www.engr.uconn.edu/me


Thomas J. BarberProfessor-in-Residence Ph.D., New York University, 1968

Computational and Physical Fluid-Dynamics

Wilson K. S. ChiuProfessorPh.D., Rutgers University, 1999

Heat and Mass Transfer and Nanomanufacturing

Theodore L. BergmanProfessor Ph.D., Purdue University, 1985

Heat Transfer and Thermal Manufacturing

Zbigniew M. BzymekAssociate ProfessorPh.D., Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, 1967

Design and CAD Modeling

Brice CassentiProfessor-in-ResidencePh.D., Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1972

Applied Mechanics

Amir FaghriUnited Technologies Endowed Chair Professor in Thermal-Fluids Engineering Ph.D., UC, Berkeley, 1976

Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics

Tai-Hsi FanAssistant ProfessorPh.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003

Biofluidics and Biotransport

Mun Y. ChoiProfessor and Dean of EngineeringPh.D., Princeton University, 1992

Combustion, Heat Transfer, Opti-cal Diagnostics, Soot Processes

Chengyu CaoAssistant ProfessorPh.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004

Dynamics and Control

Baki M. CetegenProfessor and Department HeadPh.D., California Institute of Technology, 1982

Combustion and Fluid Mechanics

UConn Mechanical Engineering FACULTY

Shiva KothaAssistant ProfessorPh.D., Rutgers University, 2000

Bone and Tissue Mechanics


Horea IliesAssociate ProfessorPh.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2000

Computational Design and CAD/CAM/CAE

Eric JordanProfessorPh.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1978

Experimental and Theoretical Mechanics

Kazem KazerounianProfessor and Associate Dean for Research and Strategic InitiativesPh.D., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1984

Design, Kinematics and Robotics

Yen-Lin HanProfessor-in-Residence Ph.D., University of Southern California, 2006

Thermo-fluid transport phenom-ena in MEMS devices

Robert GaoPratt & Whitney Endowed Chair ProfessorPh.D., Technical University of Berlin, Germany, 1991

Sensing, Mechatronics, Biomechanics

Hanchen HuangSchool of Engineering Professor in Sustainable EnergyPh.D., University of California at Los Angeles, 1995

Synthesis and properties of nano-structures (interfaces)

Tianfeng LuAssistant ProfessorPh.D., Princeton University

Combustion and Computational Fluid Mechanics

This year, Prof. Horea Ilies was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and Prof. Wilson K. S. Chiu was promoted to full Professor.

Congratulations to both!

FACULTY continued


Chih-Jen (Jackie) SungSchool of Engineering Professor in Sustainable Energy Ph.D., Princeton University, 1994

Combustion, Propulsion, Laser Diagnostics, Fuel Chemistry

Bi ZhangProfessor and Co-director of Undergraduate StudiesPh.D., Tokyo Institute of Technology, 1988

Precision Design and Manufacturing

Jiong TangAssociate Professor and Director of Graduate StudiesPh.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 2001

Structural and System Dynamics and Control

Marcelle WoodLecturer and Assistant DeanM.S., University of Connecticut, 1988

Wei SunAssistant ProfessorPh.D., University of Pittsburgh, 2003

Tissue Biomechanics

Michael W. RenfroAssociate Professor and Associate Department HeadPh.D., Purdue University, 2000

Combustion and Optical Diagnostics

Ugur PasaogullariAssistant ProfessorPh.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 2005

Transport Phenomena in Fuel Cells

Kevin D. MurphyAssociate ProfessorPh.D., Duke University, 1994

Nonlinear Dynamics and Vibrations

Nejat OlgacProfessorPh.D., Columbia University, 1976

Control Systems and Vibrations

George LykotrafitisAssistant ProfessorPh.D., California Institute of Technology, 2005

Cellular Mechanics

Theodore L. BergmanElected Member, International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer Scientific Council, 2010.

Wilson K. S. ChiuAlumni Medal of Excellence, School of Engineering, Rutgers University, 2010.

Amir Faghri Elsevier Certificate of Award, highly-cited article in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (2005-2009), 2009.

Amir Faghri “Vapor Feed Fuel Cells with a Pas-sive Thermal-Fluids Management System,” (with Z. Guo), U.S. Patent No. 7625649, December 1, 2009.

Tai-Hsi FanEarly Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Science Foundation, 2010.

Robert GaoElected Member, Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), 2010.

Robert Gao “Multi-scale Enveloping Spectro-gram Signal Processing for Condition Monitoring and the Like,” U.S. Patent No. 7602985, October 13, 2009.

Hanchen HuangRoyal Society of London KTP Visiting Professorship, 2010.


research excellence award Prof. Jiong Tang

awards and honors

Prof. Jiong Tang received this year’s research excellence award in recognition of his outstanding contributions in graduate education and research. Prof. Tang joined our department in 2001. His research is in the area of dynamical sys-tems and control with applications in structural health monitoring, sensor networks and mechanical vibrations. He is an associate editor of ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measaure-ment.

Prof. Ugur Pasaogullari (pictured left) is the recipient of this year’s teaching excellence award in recognition of his highly effective delivery of computa-tional fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, fuel cell and sustainable energy courses. He consistently receives high marks in student evaluations. Prof. Pasaogullari joined our department in 2005. His research in the area of transport, phe-nomena in fuel cells is supported by NSF, DOE and industry.

teaching excellence award Prof. Ugur Pasaogullari

This year juniors and seniors will have the chance to explore a pair of updated laboratory courses designed to bring state-of-the-art experiments and hands-on experience to the student lab bench. The new course will include updated equip-ment and goals that align better with other courses in the curriculum, while avoiding unnecessary duplication.

The first course, Fundamental Measurement Techniques, will introduce students to the basic theory of engineering measurement and sensor physics. They will learn how to acquire experimental data using various types of commercially available sensors, and how to analyze data using established analysis techniques, e.g. the Fourier transform. The lectures will be accompanied by specifically designed dem-onstration and hands-on labs. As an example, one lab asks students to measure the natural frequency of actual jet engine compressor blades (donated by Pratt & Whitney) and use Fourier transform to analyze the data and graphically present the vibration modes. In an automotive braking experiment, students will measure braking force at the driver’s foot in a master cylinder and caliper system and relate it to oil pres-sure in the brake line and actual braking force at the rotor. The goal of this first course is to prepare students with basic theory and experimental skills to tackle experiments at a more advanced level.

In the second course of the series, Applied Measurements, students will apply the theory and methods they have learned to measure-ment topics of both current interest and long term importance. These include energy conversion and integrated mechanical-electrical-chemical systems represented by alternative fuels and non-conventional energy production. Using scaled-down working models and

simulation modules, students will choose appropriate measurement techniques and instruments, conduct measurements, and obtain performance measures to evaluate the experimental results obtained. Students will also be introduced to tools and software programs for advanced flow and thermal energy diag-nostics, as well as dynamic structure health monitoring and control. The new lab equipment includes a fully transparent single cylinder spark-ignited engine that is multi-fuel capable and equipped with computerized data acquisition. Students can gather in-cylinder pressure data, conduct a cycle analysis, and evaluate the effect of alternative fuels on engine performance. In another ex-periment, students will evaluate the effect of pitch angles and different wind speeds and directions on the output characteristic of a 50 W-wind turbine generator, and establish the correlation graphically. These experiments will help students gain familiarity with a wide range of flow, power, and dynamics measurement tools, which will benefit them in their future engineering practice.


measuring up

Dr. Saptarshi Basu earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut in 2004 and 2007 respec-tively, under the guidance of Prof. Baki M Cetegen. Immediately after earning his Ph.D., Dr. Basu joined the Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Department at University of Central Florida (UCF) as a tenure track faculty member. More recently he accepted a faculty position n the Mechanical Engineering Depart-ment at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Ban-galore, India.

Dr. Basu has more than 60 publications in journals and conference proceedings. His research interests and ex-pertise are in thermal and fluid sciences with strong emphasis on in-situ optical diagnostic techniques. He has made important contributions in the areas of fuel cell water transport, flame-vortex interactions, droplet transport in plasmas and combustion dynamics of swirl-ing flames. Although an experimentalist at heart, Dr. Basu has also been engaged in computational model-ing. Currently a senior member of AIAA and member of ASME, Sigma Xi and the Combustion Institute, Dr. Basu has guided two Ph.D.s and four Masters’ students during his tenure as a faculty member at the University of Cen-tral Florida. His research work in UCF was funded by NSF, the State of Florida, the U.S. Army and Siemens Inc.

Advanced Heat and Mass Transfer Authors Amir Faghri, Yuwen Zhang and John HowellGlobal Digital Press, 974 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0984276004, 2010

Modeling and Diagnostics of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel CellsEditors Ugur Pasaogullari and Chao-Yang Wang Series: Modern Aspects of ElectrochemistryVol. 49, 394 pages, Springer, ISBN-13: 978-0387980676, 2010


ME graduateSaptarshi BasuPh.D., 2007

Graduate Research Competition Winners

First Place (tie):Mark Majewski, Ph.D. Candidate ‘Optical Methods for Nondestructive Evaluation of Thermal Barrier Coatings,’ Advisor: Prof. Michael Renfro

Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, Ph.D. Candidate ‘Blowoff Dynamics of Bluff Body Stabilized Turbulent Premixed Flames,’ Advisor: Prof. Baki M. Cetegen

Third Place (tie):Mark Bacon, M.S. Candidate‘Robust Region Tracking for Multi-agent Systems,’ Advisor: Prof. Nejat Olgac

Yi Lu, Ph.D. Candidate ‘Adaptive Energy Localization in Vibrating Structures Using Periodic Circuitry Tailoring,’ Advisor: Prof. Jiong Tang

recent books

For more ME faculty publications, visit

www.engr.uconn.edu/me/publications

READY for the challenge

With a bachelor’s degree in physics and undergraduate research work in particle physics and crystallography, Kris-

tin Kopp-Vaughan came to mechanical engineering from a fresh perspective. Kristin comments that she has “a passion for merging knowledge from several backgrounds to explore science and form a more complete picture of a phenomenon.” Her current research, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Renfro, includes the application of a variety of optical diag-nostics to combustion experiments. These experiments, coupled with simulations, aid in understanding basic combustion phe-nomenon seen in jet engine afterburners.

Kristin’s off-campus life is also distinct from the typical engi-neering graduate student. The wife of a U.S. army officer and a full time parent, she heads up the Family Readiness Group for her husband’s unit: a group which helps prepare families for army life and provides support during times of hardship. This role includes explaining to army spouses and their children current technologies in use by soldiers. “Being active in army life has given me a great opportunity to see how combustion research can aid our fighting force. Advances in afterburner

technology for safer, more maneuverable, and faster airplanes are the direct results of this kind of research, and that’s exciting!”


In his project titled “The Role of Mobility in Antibody Ag-gregation,” Prof. Fan studies antibody and immunoglobulin protein molecules that protect a living organism by binding foreign molecules and triggering the immune responses. Anti-bodies are broadly used for therapeutic purposes or as mo-lecular probes for detecting diseases. However, antibodies are very expensive pharmaceutical products due to the dif-ficulty in manufacturing and the short storage lifetime. Once aggregated, the unfolded antibodies will fail to recognize or bind antigens and will reduce the drug efficacy or even cause harmful immune responses. How to prevent antibody degradation is one of the great challenges in modern phar-maceutical sciences. This project focuses on basic understand-ing, prediction, and control of monoclonal antibody stability and dynamics in aqueous solutions. The aggregation dynam-ics in monoclonal antibody solutions will be resolved by micro-flow modeling and Brownian simulation against experimen-tal validation. Dr. Fan noted that thermal fluid sciences play essential roles in resolving the transport (diffusivity, friction constant), association (reaction kinetics) of protein molecules, as well as the bulk properties (stability, intrinsic viscosity, and viscoelasticity) of protein suspen-sions at various time scales. The project has a great potential for advancing the manufactur-ing technology for pharmaceutical products and will suggest strategies to enhance the functional life of the antibody drugs. The integrated re-search and education project will provide inter-disciplinary training on nano-bio-mechanics for students in engineering and pharmaceutical sci-ence programs.

Prof. Fan receives NSF CAREER award

Prof. Hanchen Huang

Nanotechnology is key to addressing the energy crisis through the development of sustainable energy sources. The fabrica-tion and performance of nanostructures play pivotal roles in things like solar cells and nuclear power plants. Because of the extremely small dimension of these nanostructures, fabri-cation and design have to rely on scientific understanding at the atomic and electronic levels.

Using a combination of atomistic simulations and thermal evap-oration experiments, Prof. Huang and his associates conduct scientific research in the fabrication and design of nanostruc-tures. The primary computational facility is a LINUX cluster of 672 cores for both massively parallel and serial computations, and the primary experimental facility is a high-temperature high-vacuum evaporation chamber. These facilities provide a first-class platform for research and development by scientists, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

Graduate student Stephen Stagon performs experiments

RESEARCH PROFILE

Recent work on an atomistic simulation discovery, featured in both Physical Review Letters and the DoE Office of Sci-ence Weekly, illuminates a surface science breakthrough: the discovery of the reason for nanorod growth. This pa-per allows the science community, after decades of groups fabricating nanorods without knowing why their nanorods were nano, to finally understand how nanorods are formed and to design their fabrication. Along the line of thermal evaporation experiments, a recent work in Nanotechnol-ogy reveals that friction coefficient goes up by an order of magnitude when the surface coating consists of SiC/SiO2 nanowires. In addition to exploration, the experimen-tal study serves to complement and validate the results of atomistic simulations.

Other areas of research in Prof. Huang’s group include mechanics of nanostructures and radiation damage near nanoscale interfaces.

a big role fornanotechnology research


RESEARCH PROFILEProf. Chengyu Cao

Dr. Cao’s research is in the area of dynamics and control, adaptive and intelligent systems, and mechatonics, focusing on unmanned systems and aerospace applications. He conducts research in control theory and applies these theoretical inven-tions to real world applications. His current research projects are supported by NASA, Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Sund-strand, and Hermes Micro-vision Inc., among others.

Supported by NASA, a flight controller for an aerodynamical-ly scaled unmanned aerial vehile (UAV) was developed and successfully tested. The project has been covered by Aero-News.net.

AirSTAR, also referred to as generic transport model (GTM), is a high precision aerodynamically scaled unmanned aerial vehicle that NASA developed to test advanced flight control algorithms in abnormal situations. On March 24, 2010, during the 14th flight of the NASA AirStar, an onboard L1 adaptive flight control system successfully closed the inner loop for 14 of the 16 minute flight time. This marked the first successful flight of a direct all L1 adaptive controller with a pilot in the loop. Although L1 adaptive control has been applied to various UAV platforms after its original invention by Professor Chengyu Cao at UConn and Professor Naira Hovakimyan at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, it was its first successful application on a high-end research aircraft. In addition to this, Dr. Cao is working with leading industrial partners on control of critical aerospace systems. He is working with Pratt Whitney and NASA Glenn research center on the adaptive control of

turbofan engines. Prof. Cao is also working with Hamilton Sundstrand on the adaptive control of air management systems. In addition, he works with Hermes MicroVision Inc., a semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Silicon Valley, to solve the vibration problems in nano-scale.

Controlled flight

NASA’s GTM aircraft (T2) for the test of

advanced adaptive controllers in adverse flight

conditions


Prof. Nejat Olgac RESEARCH PROFILE

Prof. Olgac’s lab group is engaged in research on computer intelligence and control logic for dynamical systems. His cur-rent research includes an NSF/DoE/Pratt & Whitney funded project on a new method of assessing the stability of systems with multiple time delays. This method has direct applica-tions in optimizing expensive machining methods such as high-speed milling, and has resulted in a paradoxical control strat-egy called the Delay Scheduling. This strategy indicates that with proper design, feedback-increased control delays could improve the dynamic performance of systems, and could even regain lost stability. This control method has a direct footprint on a variety of practical applications, from supply chain man-agement to the stabilization of high-speed data highways.

Prof. Olgac’s laboratory is also at work on a new technology for the microscopic cellular piercing used in in-vitro fertiliza-tion (IVF) and cloning. This NIH and NSF funded project has involved developing a new technology, named Ros-Drill (Ro-tationally Oscillating Drill), which leads to an improved cel-lular manipulation during IVF and drug development trials. The method is presently going through test trials in the assisted production of genetically identical mice colonies (in collabora-tion with Harvard University and UC Davis).

A third avenue of research in Olgac’s lab investigates the de-velopment of consensus protocols for swarms of autonomous vehicles. ARO, DHS and ARDEC fund the research analyzing swarm stability under pressures like time varying inter-agent communication protocols and delays in communication chan-nels. These are common problems for the defense industry and in the coordination of emergency responders.


bio-engineered solutions to challenges in healthcare, environment, and infrastructure

2010 Demonstration Day in full swing


bio-engineered solutions to challenges in healthcare, environment, and infrastructure

Senior Design Program

The UConn Senior Design Project Program is a hallmark of success for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In this two-semester course, senior students are mentored by department faculty and industry engineers as they work to solve real-life engineering problems for company sponsors. Students learn about the principles of design, how ethics af-fect engineering decisions, how professionals communicate ideas and the day-to-day implications of intellectual prop-erty. During the 2009-2010 academic year, 37 projects were sponsored by industrial organizations and govern-mental agencies.

Each Senior Design project meets the design criteria es-tablished by ABET, an engineering accreditation board, as a necessary component in a successful undergraduate engineering education. A mechanical engineering program must demonstrate that graduates have the ability to work professionally in both thermal and mechanical systems and complete the design and the realization of such systems. Students begin by researching the problem, brainstorming a range of solutions, and meeting with engineers at spon-soring companies to learn more about their projects and their sponsors. Students demonstrate their design solutions at Senior Design Dem-

onstration Day, where they are judged by an independent panel of judges.

Senior Design Demonstration Day gives parents, friends, sponsors and many guests the chance to see these proj-ects, ask questions of students, and learn more about mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut. Winners of the Senior Design competition for the 2009-2010 academic year were:

1st place: “Magnetic Shape Memory Alloy Actuator,” Sponsored by GE Consumer & Industrial

2nd place: “Metering Tank Bearing Failure & Design Analysis,” Sponsored by Rogers Corporation

3rd place: (Tie) “Cyanoacrylate Fixture Time Measuring System,” Sponsored by Henkel

and “Compact Jaw Force Measurement Device,” Spon-sored by Windham Laboratories

The Faculty Award: “CGS Shearing Interferometry Adapted to the Nano-World,” University of Connecticut

Awarded to the team that most successfully applied the fundamental principles of Mechanical Engineering to the solution of their problem.

ME Annual Report 2009 - 2010

Documents

Transcript of ME Annual Report 2009 - 2010