from the DEPARTMENT HEAD Our undergraduate program has grown to 450 students, and 78 B.S. degrees were awarded in the 08-09 academic year. The Senior Design capstone course featured 39 senior design projects sponsored by 27 companies. The department supported 12 undergraduate students as summer research interns working in faculty research laboratories. This program allows students to have research experience and provides an introduction to graduate work.
Baki M. Cetegen, Department Head Dear Colleagues and Friends, Each year we reflect upon our department’s activities in education, research and outreach. This year we’ve chosen to showcase our activities in a different format which we hope you will enjoy. The 2008–2009 academic year has continued the Department’s growth with expansion of our graduate and undergraduate programs and new faculty hires. Currently, the Mechanical Engineering department is home to 24 tenured/tenure track faculty, two professors in residence and one instructor. Research funding has more than doubled during this period with faculty bringing in new grants totaling more than $ 8.8 million. In fiscal year 2009 research expenditures for the 75 active research projects were $ 4.1 million and the total value of all active research grants in the department was $ 16.7 million. Mechanical Engineering faculty published 64 journal articles and two monographs, and were co-authors of 79 conference publications. They served on the editorial boards of 18 major journals and conferences.
Our graduate program has experienced growth in the energy area through the hire of two senior faculty members as School of Engineering Professors in Sustainable Energy: Prof. Chih-Jen Sung from Case Western Reserve University and Prof. Hanchen Huang from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Thirty-eight new students joined our graduate program, the largest group in the department’s recent history; a total of 122 students were enrolled in the increasingly diverse graduate program. The department led the establishment of a new Center of Excellence with United Technologies Pratt & Whitney in the area of “Advanced Diagnostics, Sensing and Control of Propulsion Systems.” This center already funds 10 projects in Mechanical Engineering, with a funding level of more than a half-million dollars per year. These projects supplement ongoing research in areas that are well-funded by federal agencies. While I touched upon some of the ongoing activities in the department, I invite you to take a look at the research and educational activities featured in this publication. With my best wishes,
Baki M. Cetegen Professor and Department Head
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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2008-2009 QUICK FACTS 27
faculty members
24 tenured/tenure track faculty 2 professors-in-residence 1 instructor
122 graduate students 450 undergraduate students 64 journal articles published 79 conference papers published 75 active research projects $4.1M in research expenditures $16.7M in active research projects $8.8M in new research awards in FY09
Undergraduate Enrollment
Ph.D. Enrollment
M.S. Enrollment University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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NEW FACULTY Prof. Brice Cassenti joined the department as a Professor-in-Residence in 2009. Professor Cassenti received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1968, 1969, and 1972. At the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn he worked on re-entry vehicles and heat transfer. He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1971 where he worked on a variety of military projects. In 1976 Dr. Cassenti joined the staff at United Technologies Research Center where he worked on non-linear finite element material modeling, supercomputer programming, and advanced propulsion. Dr. Cassenti was a Senior Fellow at Pratt & Whitney, where he developed probabilistic design methods for gas turbine engines. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA.
Prof. Hanchen Huang joined the department in 2009 as a School of Engineering Professor in Sustainable Energy. Previously, he was professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.S. in Physics from Hebei Normal University (China) in 1984, M.S. from the Institute of Atomic Energy of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1987, and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1995. He has worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a staff scientist, and later taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Huang’s research focuses on interface processing, including synthesis, structure evolution under mechanical deformation and radiation damage. His research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Office of Basic Energy Science of the Department of Energy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Army Research Office, and the Intercon-
nect Focus Center (a semiconductor industry consortium) at RPI. He has been co-editor of several journals including the MRS Bulletin, and serves as the associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology.
Prof. Chih-Jen (Jackie) Sung joined the Mechanical Engineering Department in 2009 as a School of Engineering Professor in Sustainable Energy. He served as a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Case Western Reserve University from 1999 to 2009. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the National Chiao Tung University in 1986, M.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1988, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 1991 and 1994, respectively. Dr. Sung’s research and teaching interests include structure of chemically reacting flows, catalytic combustion, micro-propulsion, laser diagnostics, supersonic combustion, unsteady and high-pressure flame phenomena, soot and NOx formation, flame extinction and ignition, and development of detailed and reduced chemical kinetic models for aliphatic fuels combustion. He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2002, the 2004 and 2006 Northern Ohio AIAA Best Paper Awards, and the Distinguished Paper Award in Colloquium Laminar Flames at the 31st International Symposium on Combustion in 2007. He has also received awards for teaching including the Graduate Teaching Award of the Case School of Engineering and the Case Western Reserve University Srinivasa P. Gutti Memorial Engineering Teaching Award. He is author or co-author of over 90 archival publications in combustion and propulsion.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Prof. Tianfeng Lu
RESEARCH PROFILE
high performance computing for energy applications The projects in Prof. Tianfeng Lu’s lab are primarily in the area of computational energy research, involving conventional and alternative/renewable fuels. One of the major topics in Prof. Lu’s research is the reduction of large chemical kinetic mechanisms while accounting for detailed molecular diffusion with such methods as directed relation graph (DRG), linearized and analytically solved quasi steady approximations, and diffusive species bundling. Prof. Lu’s research teams also works on the dynamic removal of chemical stiffness to enable the low-cost explicit integration in direct numerical simulations (DNS) with realistic chemistry of practical fuels. These non-stiff reduced mechanisms have already been adopted in the DNS simulations at Sandia National Labs. Another topic is the development of new methods and algorithms to systematically extract critical information on ignition, extinction and flame fronts from the large datasets generated by the tera- and peta-scale simulations. The method of chemical
Prof. Tianfeng Lu and graduate student Zhaoyu Luo
explosive mode analysis (CEMA) was developed to unambiguously visualize flames simulated by DNS, as shown in the image below (dark red: auto-igniting layers; white: premixed flames; dark blue: diffusion flames).
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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RESEARCH PROFILE
Prof. Robert X. Gao
Self-Powered Wireless DualParameter Sensing for Injection Molding Process Monitoring The distribution of temperature and pressure across an injection mold cavity plays a critical role in determining the quality of molded products. Prof. Robert Gao’s research enables simultaneous in-mold pressure and temperature sensing using a single sensor package that, when placed at multiple locations within the mold cavity, provides the spatial and temporal distribution map of the two parameters in real-time to improve the observability in polymer processing operations. Pressure is converted in the sensor into ultrasound pulse trains that propagate through the mold steel and are retrieved at remote locations outside of the mold cavity. This acoustic wireless transmission method overcomes the limitation of RF shielding in a metallic environment as typically seen in manufacturing. The effects of temperature-dependent frequency shifts of a capacitive element are exploited to modulate the ultrasound pulse trains, enabling real-time temperature
measurement of the polymer melt. Energy harvested by a piezoceramic stack from the pressure differential of the polymer melt powers the sensor, eliminating the need for external power sources. The innovative method of a self-energized, multi-physics single sensor package provides a validated real-time process sensing technology for applications in harsh manufacturing environments. In addition to injection molding, the new sensing method is applicable to improving the state-of-the-art of process monitoring and diagnosis of other high-energy manufacturing processes.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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RECENT GRANTS AND CONTRACTS SOME RECENT GRANTS AND CONTRACTS Brice Cassenti, Pratt & Whitney, Thermoviscoplastic Creep of Single Crystal Materials, $39,920. Baki Cetegen, DoD/AFOSR/Innovative Scientific Solutions, Inc., Investigations on Continuous Rotating, $60,389. Wilson Chiu, DoE/ University of South Carolina, Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), Science Based Nano-Structure Design and Synthesis of Heterogeneous Functional Materials for Energy Systems, UConn Component $930,000. Robert Gao, NSF, GOALI-Integrated Sensing System for Stamping, Monitoring and Control, $57,926. Robert Gao, United Technologies-Pratt & Whitney, Enhanced Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Combustion Visualization, $113,869. Robert Gao, Pratt & Whitney, Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Fluid-Air Visualization, $42,041. Robert Gao, Pratt & Whitney, Enhanced Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Combustion Visualization, $58,082. Hanchen Huang, DOD/Defense Threat Reduction Agency/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, A Self-Consistent Multiscale Method for Modeling the Effects of Neutron Irradiation on the Mechanical Properties of BCC and FCC Metals, $474,049. Hanchen Huang, DoE, Control of New Kinetic Barriers and Design of Nanorods, $340,000. Hanchen Huang, NSF, A New Characteristic Length Scale on Surfaces, $280,000.
Eric Jordan (PI) and Maurice Gell (Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering), DOD/Office of Naval Research, Thin, Dense Ceramic Layers To Improve Thermal Barrier Coating Performance, Durability and Reliability, $50,000. Eric H. Jordan, Pratt & Whitney, Life Prediction for Ceramic Coatings, $60,000 Kazem Kazerounian (PI) and Marty Wood (Undergraduate Education), NSF, RET Site: The Joule Fellows - Teachers in Sustainable Energies Research Laboratories, $450,000. Kazem Kazerounian (PI), Horea Ilies (Mechanical Engineering), Amy Anderson (Pharmaceutical Sciences) and Peter Burkhard (Molecular & Cell Biology), NSF, A Mechanics Framework for the Analysis and Design of Protein Based Nano Machines, $325,108. Kazem Kazerounian, New Dimension Technologies Corporation, Development of a Knowledge Based Expert System for Robotic Grinding, $257,030. Shiva Kotha, NSF, CAREER: Hierarchies of Repair in Damaged Bone - A Role for Osteocytes, $430,000. Shiva Kotha (PI) and John Enderle (Electrical and Computer Engineering), NSF, Device for Tooth Cleaning in the Disabled, $220,000. Shiva Kotha, NSF/ENG, CAREER: Hierarchies of Repair in Damaged Bone – A Role for Osteocytes, $430,000. Tianfeng Lu, NSF, Collaborative Research: Petascale Computing, Visualization and Science Discovery of Turbulent Sooting Flames, $262,437.
Horea Ilies (PI), Kazem Kazerounian (Mechanical Engineering), Kerry Marsh (Psychology), Kristine Nowak (Communications Sciences) and Amy Anderson (Pharmaceutical Sciences), NSF, MRI: Development of a Gesture Based Virtual Reality System for Research in Virtual Worlds, $782,039.
Tianfeng Lu, DOD/Air Force/ Princeton University, Reduction of Detailed Kinetic Mechanisms for Surrogate Fuels, $34,750.
Horea Ilies, NSF, Geometric Skeletons for Topologically Evolving Domains, $319,933.
Tianfeng F. Lu, Pratt & Whitney, Automated Reduction for Alternative Fuels, $63,000.
Tianfeng Lu, United Technologies- Pratt & Whitney, Automated Mechanism Reduction for Alternative Fuels, $34,890.
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Baki M. Cetegen and Michael W. Renfro, Pratt & Whitney, Dynamics of Bluff-Body Stabilized Premixed and Partially-Premixed Flames near Blowoff, $100,000. Wei Sun, NIH/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Engineering Analysis of Minimally Invasive Mitral Valve Repair (Pre-doctoral Fellowship for Thuy Pham), $123,584.
ME graduate student finds balance in study and service
Chih-Jen Sung, DoE / Princeton University, Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) for Combustion Science, UConn Component $930,000. Chih-Jen Sung, NSF, Autoignition Chemistry of Gasoline Surrogates Relevant to HCCI Operating Conditions, $299,999. Chih-Jen Sung, DoD/AFOSR/Princeton University, MURI: Generation of Comprehensive Surrogate Kinetic Models and Validation Database for Simulating Large Molecular Weight Hydrocarbon Fuels – UConn Component $761,500.
ME Areas of Concentration ESTABLISHED The Mechanical Engineering department recently established four Areas of Concentration in the undergraduate program to help students gain more depth in a specific area. These areas are:
Aerospace Energy and Power Dynamic Systems and Control Design and Manufacturing
Mark Majewski is not just a full time doctoral student in Prof. Renfro’s research lab, working on laser induced flouresencent particle thermometry. He’s also Captain of the Oakdale volunteer fire department, and works evenings as a trained emergency medical technician. He’s been a firefighter for the past 12 years, after following in his brother’s footsteps at the end of highschool. Mark comments that his graduate career in engineering and his emergency response work are not unrelated: “Helping your neighbor is the common thread, whether short term on the emergency scene or long term with the development of new technology.” Mark completed his Master of Science degree in 2003 with Prof. Lee Langston. He worked for Belcan (a Pratt & Whitney contractor) for three years before returning as a full time doctoral student in 2006. His doctoral advisor, Prof. Mike Renfro, says “Mark’s broad experiences and interests give him a unique perspective in his work. He has an excellent ability to balance all of the demands on his time and is always willing to put in more to help other students with their projects.” Despite the additional pressure his emergency response career may bring to his schedule, Mark finds that it gives him a unique perspective on his graduate work: “As a research engineer it has been especially interesting to see the positive transformation technology has brought to emergency response; advancements made in the equipment and techniques used to care for patients and protect emergency services personnel.”
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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UConn Mechanical Engineering FACULTY Thomas J. Barber
Baki M. Cetegen
Professor-in-Residence
Professor and Department Head
Theodore L. Bergman
Wilson K. S. Chiu
Professor
Associate Professor
Zbigniew M. Bzymek
Mun Y. Choi
Associate Professor
Professor and Dean of Engineering Ph.D., Princeton University, 1992
Chengyu Cao
Amir Faghri
Assistant Professor
United Technologies Endowed Chair Professor in Thermal-Fluids Engineering
Brice Cassenti
Tai-Hsi Fan
Professor-in-Residence
Assistant Professor
www.engr.uconn.edu/me University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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FACULTY continued Robert Gao
Eric Jordan
Pratt & Whitney Endowed Chair Professor Ph.D., Technical University of Berlin, Germany, 1991
Professor
Sensing, Mechatronics, Biomechanics
Hanchen Huang
Kazem Kazerounian
School of Engineering Professor in Sustainable Energy Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles, 1995
Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives
Synthesis and Properties of Nanostructures (Interfaces)
Horea Ilies Assistant Professor
Shiva Kotha Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Rutgers University, 2000
Tianfeng Lu Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Princeton University
teaching excellence award Prof. Horea Ilies
Prof. Horea Ilies is the recipient of this year’s teaching excellence award in recognition of the highly popular courses he teaches in Geometric modeling and Computer aided design. He consistently receives excellent reviews of his courses from students and has introduced innovative project experiences in them. Prof. Ilies joined the faculty in 2004. He is also an active researcher in the area of geometric modeling and his research is funded by multiple grants from National Science Foundation.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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George Lykotrafitis
Wei Sun
Assistant Professor Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 2005
Assistant Professor
Kevin D. Murphy
Chih-Jen (Jackie) Sung
Associate Professor
School of Engineering Professor in Sustainable Energy
Nejat Olgac
Jiong Tang
Professor
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Ugur Pasaogullari
Marcelle Wood
Assistant Professor
Lecturer and Assistant Dean
Michael W. Renfro
Bi Zhang
Associate Professor and Associate Department Head Ph.D., Purdue University, 2000
Professor and Co-director of Undergraduate Studies
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Teaching Innovations In January 2009, the Department of Mechanical Engineering launched a new approach to teaching the freshmen course Introduction to Mechanical Engineering (Engr. 1166) led by Prof. Kevin Murphy. This effort was aimed at improving the first year experience by creating a dynamic classroom setting that stresses fundamentals and introducing a real design team experience. Each week the lecture content exposed the freshmen to a different aspect of engineering sciences and design (e.g., dynamics, solid mechanics, fluid mechanics) and emphasized the skills needed to apply basic scientific principles to new engineering problems. This lecture portion of the course was administered by three of our top Ph.D. students, Ned Moore, Kristin Kopp-Vaughan, and Zahra Shahbazi (pictured top right)) who were mentored and supervised by Prof. Murphy (also pictured). The seven-week project took these principles and used them to develop a real engineering design. Each team was led by a senior; these seniors were simultaneously enrolled in the elective course titled Leadership in Engineering, which provided training on basic leadership competencies. In this sense, the projects served as a true “lab” for both the freshmen and the seniors. The freshmen used their engineering skills in an open-ended, practical setting and the seniors put their newfound leadership skills to the test in a real-life situation.
reasearch excellence award to Prof. Eric Jordan Prof. Eric Jordan received this year’s research excellence award. He has been a member of the department’s faculty since 1979. His research concerns studies of high temperature materials behavior and stress analysis including elevated temperature multiaxial fatigue, constitutive modeling of single-crystal turbine blade alloys,
awards and honors Wilson K. S. Chiu Method and Apparatus for Open-Air Coatings by LaserInduced Chemical Vapor Deposition, (with K. H. Kwok) July 29, 2008, U. S. Patent No. 7404983.
George Lykotrafitis Hetenyi Award for Best Research Paper Published in Experimental Mechanics, Society for Experimental Mechanics, 2009.
Ugur Pasaogullari Wilson K. S. Chiu National Science Foundation UTC Professorship in CAREER Award, 2008. Engineering Innovation, 2009. Bi Zhang Mun Y. Choi Outstanding Contribution Elected Member, Connecticut Award, The 8th International Academy of Science and Conference on Frontiers of Engineering, 2009. Design and Manufacturing, 2008. Shiva Kotha National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2009.
and the development of a unique X-ray extensometer. Currently, he is involved in the development of optical methods designed to nondestructively predict remaining life in thermal barrier coatings and deposition of thin metallic and ceramic coatings. He received the R. E. Peterson award form the Society of Experimental Mechanics and is a Fellow of ASME.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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UTC / UConn Center of Excellence Established UTC Pratt & Whitney and UConn established a Center of Excellence in Advanced Diagnostics, Sensing and Control of Propulsion Systems. Under this Center agreement, UTC Pratt & Whitney will fund research projects in Mechanical Engineering and other departments with a guaranteed floor funding level. Pratt & Whitney currently funds over $500,000 in research projects each year. Nine of these projects include laser diagnostics of turbulent premixed flames, electrical capacitance tomography, fast response adaptive control of aircraft gas turbine engines, automated chemical mechanism reduction for alternative fuels combustion, thermo-viscoplastic creep and fracture and life prediction of ceramic coatings. This Center of Excellence will complement ongoing research in the areas of sensors, sensor systems and system control, and thermo-fluids research including combustion and multi-phase flows and mechanics of materials. This center will also have participation from other divisions of United Technologies, including Hamilton-Sundstrand and United Technologies Research Center.
v
UTC Pratt & Whitney and UConn Mechanical Engineering will also inaugurate an annual Pratt & Whitney Distinguished Lecture in Mechanical Engineering. Each year a prominent academic will be invited to deliver a lecture and will be hosted jointly by the Mechanical Engineering department and Pratt & Whitney. There will be opportunities to visit Pratt & Whitney facilities in East Hartford and interact with Pratt & Whitney engineers.
Distance Learning
For the past 10 years, the ME department has led a graduate level educational outreach program called the Master of Engineering (MENG). The goals of the program are to meet the educational requirements of industrial companies and their engineers, to facilitate interaction of industrial companies with engineering faculty and to provide a valuable resource for Connecticut industry. A MENG degree emphasizes improvement of essential technical and professional skills, while a traditional M.S. degree emphasizes research or a comprehensive understanding in a given area. In the MENG program, a composite generalist degree merging technical engineering and professional development classes is offered. It is targeted at practicing engineers at participating companies and allows the line engineer to earn a master’s degree without work day interruptions. Faculty from the School of Engineering at UConn teach courses on the premises or remotely, affording the utmost in educational quality at the greatest convenience. The MENG Program provides individuals and companies the opportunity to experience the world-class continuing education offered by UConn School of Engineering. Interested students have the flexibility to choose from classes offered at UConn’s campus or at nearby companies.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Prof. Kotha receives CAREER award Dr. Shiva Kotha, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, has won a coveted fiveyear, $430,000 NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, that will support his research focusing on strategies for improving the body’s ability to repair damaged bone. Dr. Kotha, who is also affiliated with the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Program, and the sixth Mechanical Engineering faculty member to receive the CAREER Award. Dr. Kotha is particularly interested in exploring the effects of three distinct mechanisms: (a) changes in whole bone structure by a process termed modeling, (b) replacement of damaged tissue with newly formed intact tissue by a process termed remodeling, and (c) repair by osteocytes, which are cells embedded in the bone that may play a role in coordinating the skeleton’s adaptive responses. He hypothesizes that these three mechanisms improve the mechanical properties of damaged bone at varying scales and over progressively longer periods. This work builds upon his previous research targeting osteoporosis, which afflicts 75 million people worldwide. The focus of one investigation involved the determination of the optimal dosage of a pharmacological agent, the salt lithium chloride, which interacts synergistically with mechanical loading to activate bone formation at sites of peak mechanical stresses. Dr. Kotha noted that failure to enhance bone formation at these sites can result in bone fractures. The research is important in building an insightful foundation for regulation of bone mass by mechanical loading and in evaluating molecular pathways to reduce fracture risk. As an important facet of this novel research effort, Dr. Kotha will develop new coursework for not only undergraduate biomedical engineering students but also K-12 students and high school teachers.
Prof. John Bennett retires
Prof. Bennett retired after 29 years on the Mechanical Engineering faculty. He joined the department in 1980 after an 11 year career at the United Technologies Research Center. He has taught many of the classses in the thermofluids area and has done research on turbulence and laser velocimetry. More recently he has concentrated his efforts on the scholarship of teaching and learning, engaging students in effective problem-solving and team work. Prof. Bennett also served as Associate Department Head (2003 - 2006) and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (2006 - 2009).
Prof. John Bennett mentors an entrepreuneurial Senior Design team, featuring Carlton Forse (left), Geoffrey Cullen (standing), and Ryan Gresh (right)
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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A new partnership in research and education with UTC Pratt & Whitney UTC Pratt & Whitney and the UConn School of Engineering have renewed their partnership in research and education with the establishment of a Center of Excellence in Advanced Diagnostics, Sensing and Control of Propulsion Systems and rededication of the lobby in the United Technologies Building, home to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Today’s event is not only a rededication of the UTC Engineering building lobby, but the opening of a new chapter in a long-term partnership in research, education and outreach between UTC and UConn Engineering,” said Baki Cetegen, head of Mechanical Engineering. A quarter-scale cutaway model of the V2500 engine, a display case filled with hardware from Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand, and a series of technical posters on UTC products provide an opportunity for engineering students to view aerospace products up close. A LCD monitor installed in the lobby also showcases informative videos about UTC’s history and businesses.
“The collaboration between Pratt & Whitney, UTC and UConn helps to produce better products and improve the region. At UConn, this partnership enables us to attract world-class experts to our faculty and top students to our engineering programs. This partnership also benefits the people of the state of Connecticut,” said UConn Provost Peter Nicholls. “Today is a significant milestone in improving our relationship with the UConn School of Engineering,” said Tom Prete, Director of Turbine Module Center Engineering at Pratt & Whitney and a member of the External Advisory Board of the Mechanical Engineering Department. “UTC is based on innovation. We rely on talented engineering students from your university and others to help us solve technical challenges and to develop the next generation of products at United Technologies.” Also present was Dave Carter, vice president of Engineering & Technology, Hamilton Sundstrand. Carter, who was vice president, Engineering-Module Centers, Pratt & Whitney, is now UTC’s focal point for the corporation’s relationship with UConn’s School of Engineering.
“We think this is going to be the beginning of an important relationship with Pratt & Whitney,” said Mun Choi, dean of the UConn School of Engineering. “With renewed emphasis on collaboration, we can make this relationship truly successful. In the end, we want to be a technical resource for key industries in this state.”
“The work celebrated here represents a tremendous amount of effort over many years,” said Al Brockett, vice president, Engineering-Module Centers. “A revitalized relationship with the UConn School of Engineering and other top universities is critical to helping Pratt & Whitney continue to find the engineering talent to develop more game-changing products like the PurePower PW1000G Geared Turbofan engine.”
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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RESEARCH PROFILE
Prof. Michael W. Renfro
local flame extinction Advanced combustor designs rely on rapid mixing of fuel and air to provide cooler flames and lower pollutant production. In some cases, the local mixing can be so fast that chemical reactions cannot occur leading to local extinction of the flame. Understanding this local extinction process enables better combustor designs that either avoid local extinction or take advantage of it to control the nature of the combustion process. Prof. Renfro and his students have developed a novel and simple laboratory combustor that can produce stable local extinction for detailed study. Experimental measurements of the local chemical constituents and gradients in the fuel and oxidizer concentrations, which lead to mixing, were made and used to assess the conditions that cause extinction. Modeling of these flames was also completed to complement the experimental work.
The results show that the extinction process is not only dependent on local mixing, as previously believed, but also on flame temperatures upstream of the extinction point and on absolute velocities at the extinction point. A correlation for the effect of advective heat transfer through the flame edge on the onset of local extinction was developed from the numerical study. This improved understanding of the extinction process can be used to develop models for more complex combustion simulations used in combustor design.
Graduate student T.J. Boucher with Prof. Michael Renfro University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Prof. Horea Ilies A new twist on geometric shapes
RESEARCH PROFILE Graduate students Hima Khoshreza and Zahra Shahbazi
Prof. Horea Ilies’ group is developing a fundamentally new approach to construct families of geometric skeletons for 2- and 3-dimensional geometric shapes that can be either rigid or undergoing drastic topological deformations. The approach relies on computing constructive representations of shapes with R-functions that operate on real-valued halfspaces as logic operations. These can generate novel, more stable skeletons, and intrinsically support localized and parallel skeleton computations for domains with rigid or evolving boundaries. The goals are to develop new theoretical foundations for geometric skeletons as geometric and topological descriptors of shape, as well as a computational framework capable of efficiently computing local changes to the skeleton induced by local changes to the boundary of the domain. This research will lead to powerful generic algorithms for computing families of geometric skeletons for complex spatial environments. This, in turn, could transform all geometrically intensive areas of science, including almost all engi-
neering disciplines, by providing access to new and potent descriptors of shape. Applications that would benefit from the proposed approach include geometric modeling of engineering artifacts, fully automated mesh generation for engineering analysis, feature recognition and defeaturing of engineering models, and real-time trajectory planning of autonomous vehicles and machine tools with adaptive geometric constraints. Furthermore, this new framework will stimulate critical new avenues of interdisciplinary research involving engineering, biology, computer science, and human-computer interaction.
University of Connecticut - Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Prof. Shiva P. Kotha
RESEARCH PROFILE
bio-engineered solutions to healthcare, environment, and infrastructure challenges The Kotha lab’s current research is focused on the areas of biomedicine, biofuels, biomaterials and sensors. In biomedicine, the lab group is evaluating the molecular profiles underlying bone adaptation to mechanical loading, in non-invasive regeneration/shaping of bone, and in the development of novel devices and materials for improving chronic health issues. They apply a non-invasive stimulus and evaluate the molecular response of cells in making bone, removing bone, and their combination in sustaining bone mechanical integrity. These results are then used to make specific particles containing drugs that can be used to modulate individual cell response within existing tissues. Professor Kotha recently received the NSF CAREER award to study the repair of damaged bone. In biofuels, Prof. Kotha’s group is evaluating devices that can harness the biology of microbes in order to provide biofuels in a sustainable manner that result in preservation of forests while providing employment to a considerable number of lowincome individuals. In materials, the lab group is are making new shape changing materials that provide significantly greater strength and displacement compared to existing materials. The biomimetics based design of self-repairing composites is expected to lead to extremely tough materials without sacrificing the strength (normally, a compromise has to be made between strength and toughness). Shape changing will be made possible by phase transitions of nano-materials in confined spaces. These in combination are expected to lead to novel functions.
Ph.D. student Yamalia Roberts, Prof. Shiva Kotha, and Ph.D. students James Macione and Abhijit Debroy
In sensors, the Kotha group is developing novel technologies based on photoacoustics and ultrasound that will enable imaging of defects/corrosion and residual mechanical properties. A novel processing approach is being developed that can provide a significantly large improvement over existing technologies.
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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 affect engineering decisions, how professionals communicate ideas and the day-to-day implications of intellectual property. In the course of a year the student teams synthesize design know-how, judgment, technical skills, analysis, creativity and innovation to design, optimize and manufacture a prototype model, or to perform product simulations. During the 2008-2009 academic year, 39 projects were sponsored by industrial organizations and currently funded grants and contracts. Each Senior Design Program project meets the design criteria established 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 travelling to the sponsor company site to learn more about how the company works and how the project fits in. Students demonstrate their solution at Senior Design Demonstration Day, where they are judged by an independent panel of industrial judges.
sponsors and local government officials the chance to see projects at work, ask questions of students, and learn more about mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut. Winners of this competition for 2009 were: 1st place: “Next Generation Current Interrupter,” GE Consumer & Industrial 2nd place: “Validation of FLUENT for Predicting Flow & Heat Transfer Characteristics of Turbine Pedestal Arrays,” Pratt & Whitney 3rd place: (tie) “Product Packaging and Handling Standard Work,” Pratt&Whitney and “Experimental Method for High Rate Water Impact Loading of Composite Laminates,” General Dynamics/ Electric Boat The Faculty Award: “Design and Construction of a Narrow Depth-of-Field Optical Imaging System,” (awarded to the team that most successfully applied the fundamental principles of Mechanical Engineering to the solution of their problem).
Senior Design Demonstration Day gives parents, friends,
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