ENDING THE THERMOSTAT WARS, SAVING ENERGY Thirteen percent of energy usage in the United States can be attributed to heating, ventilating, and air conditioning buildings. This also accounts for about 13 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
L
ast year, Professor H. Ezzat Khalifa and his team of researchers answered a call from ARPA-E to address this problem and were awarded $3.2 million from the Department of Energy and $319,000 from NYSTAR to develop a self-contained, micro-environmental control unit, smaller than a computer desktop tower, that can cool or heat the air in proximity to employees’ work stations. This will allow the building’s thermostat to be raised in the summer and lowered in the winter. Recently, NYSERDA awarded an additional $400,000 to develop a version of the system for electric demand reduction in New York City on hot summer days.
With your help, there is no limit what your Department can achieve. Please consider giving online at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
H
owever, there isn’t currently a fundamental understanding of how air flows through these more complex geometries. This gap in knowledge needs to be closed to expand aerospace engineers’ ability to develop next-generation airplanes for the U.S. Air Force.
When patients undergo traditional knee replacement surgery, the bone and cartilage that make up their knee joint are replaced with one built with metal, plastic, and polymers.
A
long with their natural joint, patients lose a certain quality of life. Despite significant advances in artificial joints, Professor Michelle Blum sees a distinct need for better solutions and has made repairing knee joints a primary focus of her research.
We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Unlike the circular nozzles of traditional jet engines, modern aircraft like the F-117 and F-35 feature nozzles with different shapes and configurations to fit the airframe and improve the aircraft’s performance, adaptive control, fuel efficiency, and cooling for thermal management.
FAKE A KNEE—STUDENTS DEVELOP ONE-OF-A-KIND DEVICE
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
Professors Mark Glauser and Jacques Lewalle were awarded a $303,896 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to continue to address this deficiency by studying fundamental turbulence mechanisms in multi-stream complex nozzle configurations that are of interest to the Air Force. The ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of flow in advanced air vehicle designs and to lay groundwork for intelligent flow control and more efficient aircraft.
In cooling mode, the system freezes a phase-change material at night and releases the stored cooling as a breeze of 72-degree air when the desk is occupied. In heating mode, the system draws heat from the phase-change material and uses a heat pump to boosts the temperature of its blown air to 95 degrees. If adopted by an entire office, the system could save more than 20 percent of the total energy provided for heating and cooling.
Gifts from donors like you contribute to classroom upgrades like the Sandra and Avi Nash Collaborative Classroom used by professors like Professor John Dannenhoffer to innovate engineering education. They pay for state-of-the-art laboratory equipment needed to conduct groundbreaking research like Professor Maroo’s. Gifts provide students like Riley Gourde with educational experiences that simply could not exist without our donors’ steadfast commitment.
UNCOVERING FUNDAMENTALS OF JET PROPULSION AND NOISE
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
She called upon students Ryan Olson ’14, G’16 and Gabriel Smolnycki ’17 to develop a custom piece of equipment to test biomimetic materials that may one day be used to patch cartilage damage. The result is the 6-Axis CNC Biotribometer—a simulator capable of mimicking the complex motion of a walking gait cycle of the human knee. It is able to quantify the friction response and wear rate of natural and synthetic material and collect wear particles for further analysis. A novel feature of the device is its ability to operate in a simulated in-vivo environment where joint capsule
CLEANER COMBUSTION THROUGH LASER IGNITION Despite big improvements to engine technology over the years, ignition methods have remained the same.
temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric conditions can be regulated. This makes it possible to also test scaffolds with living cells in the device.
I
n Professor Benjamin Akih-Kumgeh’s lab, researchers use a focused laser beam for ignition at very low fuel proportions. This is difficult to achieve using a spark plug and could provide cleaner combustion. Laser ignition also introduces the ability to ignite various kinds of fuels, including gasoline, biofuels, and natural gas. In a recent study, researchers compared laser ignition of methane to that of renewable biogas to determine the minimum energy required for ignition and observe how unsuccessful ignition may occur in each case. They were able to link variations in required laser energy under different mixture proportions to the prevailing pressures, temperatures, and focusing optics. One day, this technology could be used in electric power generation and even in vehicles. By exploring the use of renewable biofuel, improving fuel efficiency, and reducing emissions, the team demonstrates that combustion has a place in sustainability that many people don’t realize.
USING NANOTECHNOLOGY TO COOL TOMORROW’S TECH All electronics heat up when they are operating. The more work they do, the hotter they get, and that can diminish their performance significantly.
R
apid and efficient cooling is going to be required to make faster and smaller next-generation computer chips and energy conversion devices possible.
One way to cool them is with boiling—currently the most effective way to remove heat from a surface. Unfortunately, it has its limitations. In boiling, heat removal tops off at 100 to 300 watts per square centimeter of area. While substantial, this is still not enough for next-generation devices where cooling rates of more than 1,000 watts per square centimeter are desired. Professor Shalabh Maroo has been awarded a $500,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant to investigate the fundamental physics associated with
SPRING 2016
nanoscale meniscus evaporation and passive liquid flow to remove large amounts of heat from small surfaces in very short amounts of time. His research aims to prevent boiling with use of nanotechnology to achieve nanoscale evaporation, which can remove 10 times as much heat as boiling. Eventually, this knowledge could be applied to next-generation heat exchangers for thermal management of electronics and renewable energy technologies, such as concentrated solar photovoltaic cells.