Author: Orlando E

Prof. Michael Yu Wang (HKUST): Material and Structure Design and Optimization in the Era of Additive Manufacturing

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Abstract: Additive manufacturing (AM) today affords complete freedom in controlling geometric details and material composition in three-dimensional fabrication. They provide new routes for manufacturing parts with structural properties in high-strength, light-weight, and exceptional performance. To further the adoption of the AM technologies, there is a need for “Design for Additive Manufacturing” methodologies and computer tools that empower designers to realize products that can fully capitalize on the AM capabilities.

Our approach to Design for Additive Manufacturing is an optimization-driven methodology for design exploration, synthesis and multi-disciplinary optimization. Our primary development is a topology optimization method integrated with analysis models for optimal material design of functional components. The required material properties are achieved by optimizing the important factors governing void geometry and material distribution. It generates structurally optimal design concepts from supplied information on loads, constraints and required product performance and manufacture conditions. The method has found a wide range of applications in the design of multi-functional structures, auxetic materials, and light-weight aero-structures. The applications for cellular structures and shellular materials will be particularly discussed.

Bio Sketch: Michael Yu Wang is a Chair Professor and the Founding Director of Robotics Institute at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He earned his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and previously taught at University of Maryland, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and National University of Singapore. He has numerous professional honors–including Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from Society of Automotive Engineers, 1994; LaRoux K. Gillespie Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from Society of Manufacturing Engineers, 1995; Boeing–A.D. Welliver Faculty Summer Fellow, 1998; China State Natural Science Prize (Second Class) from the Ministry of Science & Technology of China (2012), and ASME Design Automation Award (2013) from ASME. He is a Fellow of ASME, HKIE, and IEEE.

Chih-Jen (Jackie) Sung Named Combustion Institute Fellow

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By: Eli Freund, Editorial Communications Manager, UConn School of Engineering 

The UConn School of Engineering is proud to announce that Mechanical Engineering Professor Chih-Jen Sung has been recognized as one of the 2019 Class of Fellows for The Combustion Institute.

Sung joins a class of 38 accomplished international scholars from industry, academia, and the public sector, and was recognized for “novel contributions to flame dynamics and structure, and development of rapid compression machines to enhance understanding of low-temperature chemistry.”

Read the School of Engineering announcement.

ME Students Revamp Hartford’s Historic Keney Clock Tower

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After a four-year vacation, the Historic Keney Clock is telling time again thanks to senior design project completed by Mechanical Engineering students seniors Henry Courchaine ’19, Garrett Murphy ’19, and Spencer Padget ’19 advised by Thomas Mealy. The project was a collaboration between UConn, the City of Hartford and Friends of Keney Park.

Through our Senior Design Program, directed by Prof. Vito Moreno, industrial sponsors put the bright UConn ME undergraduate students to work on a real-world problem that they are interested in researching, while reaping the benefits of our faculty’s experience and expertise. The renovation of the Historic Keney Clock Tower is one of the more than 65 senior design projects that Mechanical Engineering students worked on during the 2018-2019 academic year.

For additional information, please see the article in UConn Today or the press coverage, including:

 

Our Senior Design Program Leads to Mutually Beneficial Partnerships with Industry

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Through our Senior Design Program, industrial sponsors put the bright UConn ME undergraduate students to work on a real-world problem that they are interested in researching, while reaping the benefits of our faculty’s experience and expertise. For students, this program is an opportunity to synthesize and apply the classroom engineering knowledge they have acquired. They delve further into various aspects of product development process, and are experiencing first hand how ethics affect engineering decisions, how professionals communicate ideas and the day-to-day implications of design decisions and of intellectual property.

Here is a podcast, part of Simsbury Bank’s “Manufacturing Matters” initiative, in which CEO Martin Geitz discusses a UConn Engineering Senior Design partnership with EDAC Technologies that has provided a mechanism to hire some of our talented engineering graduates while providing solutions to one of the company’s major challenges.

 

From left to right in the video: Kenneth Osborn (Engineering Manager, EDAC), Emily Sweeney (UConn senior), Martin Geitz (CEO, Simsbury Bank) and Prof. Vito Moreno (UConn).

 

Prof. Ronald K. Hanson (Stanford): PW Distinguished Lecture: New Strategies for Laser Diagnostics and Shock Tube Imaging

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Abstract: This presentation will introduce two new ideas for laser diagnostics applicable to combustion and propulsion and two new ideas for high-speed imaging of combustion phenomena in a shock tube.  The first laser diagnostic to be discussed is Spectrally-Resolved Fluorescence, in which a narrow-linewidth wavelength-tunable laser source is rapidly scanned over one or more absorption transitions, allowing collection of a spatially resolved laser-induced fluorescence signal that reflects the strength and shape of the absorption feature.  This diagnostic can potentially provide accurate determinations of temperature, pressure, flow velocity and the concentration of the absorbing species.  The example to be presented will be of OH excited and detected in the ultraviolet (UV).  The second new laser diagnostic utilizes a narrow-linewidth infrared laser source that can be scanned rapidly over a relatively wide wavelength range, thereby enabling acquisition of spectral absorption cross-sections over a full rovibrational absorption band of combustion-relevant species in a short time (a few milliseconds), compatible with the test times available in reflected shock wave experiments.   The goal of the experiments is to generate a unique data base for cross-sections over a wide range of temperature, not feasible in a heated static cell.  Two other experiments will be presented, both based on imaging of shock-heated gases. In the first experiment, high-speed imaging is used to visualize and characterize aspects of inhomogeneous ignition that can occur in reflected shock wave experiments of hydrocarbon fuel ignition; such inhomogeneous ignition is undesirable and can contaminate data sets aimed at providing high-quality information on ignition delay times.  As a second example of imaging in a shock tube, a new experiment will be introduced that measures the burning velocity of a flame produced by laser ignition of combustible gases behind a reflected shock wave.  The objective is to enable flame speed measurements at elevated temperatures not accessible with conventional flame speed techniques.  Such conventional methods are limited by the partial reaction of the mixture that occur during the lengthy period of preparing reactive mixtures, whereas with a shock tube experiment the time interval between shock wave heating and ignition can be adjusted to be quite small.  Results obtained in heptane-air flames provide clear evidence of cool flame effects not previously seen in flame speed experiments.  In current work, the observation of flame speed from the time-resolved position of chemiluminescent emission is also being augmented by various laser absorption diagnostics to additionally characterize the burned gases behind the flame.

Bio Sketch: Professor Hanson received his bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University in mechanical engineering and his doctoral degree from Stanford University where he currently holds the Woodard Chair in Mechanical Engineering.  He has been an international leader in the development of laser-based diagnostic methods for combustion and propulsion, and in the development of shock tube methods for accurate determination of chemical reaction rate parameters needed for modeling combustion and propulsion systems, and together with his students he has made several pioneering contributions that have advanced the pace of propulsion research and development worldwide.  He is a Fellow of AIAA, ASME and OSA, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of gold medal awards from the Combustion Institute, the Institute for Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems, and multiple gold medals from the AIAA. He has published over one thousand papers and advised over 100 doctoral students, including 31 now holding faculty appointments around the world.

A new, nature-inspired self-healing rubber developed by Prof. Li and his collaborators from USC.

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A severed 3D-printed shoe pad repairing itself (Submitted Photo/An Xin and Kunhao Yu)

A new paper published by Prof. Ying Li and his collaborators from University of Southern California in NPG Asia Materials provide the details of a new class of self-healing rubber that is inspired by the healing of natural tissues.

For more details, please see the news article from UConn Today.

 

 

Dr. Ruhong Zhou (IBM): Large Scale Molecular Simulation of Nanoparticle-Biomolecule Interactions

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Abstract: ​Nanoscale particles have become promising materials in various biomedical applications, however, in order to stimulate and facilitate these applications, there is an urgent need for a better understanding of their biological effects and underlying physics. In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent works, mostly molecular modelling, at bio-nano interface and their underlying molecular mechanism. We show that carbon-based nanoparticles (carbon nanotubes, graphene nanosheets, and fullerenes) can interact and disrupt the structures and functions of many important proteins. The hydrophobic interactions between the carbon nanotubes and hydrophobic residues, particularly aromatic residues through the so-called π-π stacking interactions, are found to play key roles. Meanwhile, metallofullerenol Gd@C82(OH)22 is found to inhibit tumour growth and metastases with both experimental and theoretical approaches. Graphene and graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets show strong destructive interactions to ​E. coli cell membranes (antibacterial activity) with unique molecular mechanisms, while PEGylated GO nanosheets stimulate potent cytokine responses in peritoneal macrophages. On the other hand, GO nanosheets also show a strong supportive role in enzyme immobilisation such as lipases through lid opening. In particular, the lid opening is assisted by lipase’s sophisticated interaction with GO, which allows the adsorbed lipase to enhance its enzyme activity. The lipase enzymatic activity can be further optimized through fine tuning of the GO surface hydrophobicity. These findings might provide a better understanding the underlying physics at bio-nano interface, with implications in future ​de novo​ nanomedicine design.

Biographical Sketch: ​Ruhong Zhou, AAAS Fellow, APS Fellow, is currently a Distinguished Research Staff Member and Manager of Soft Matter Science, IBM Healthcare and Life Science Research, and an Adjunct Professor at Department of Chemistry, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. with Prof. Bruce Berne in chemistry from Columbia University in 1997. He joined IBM Research in 2000, after spending two and a half years working with Prof. Richard Friesner (Columbia Univ) and Prof. William Jorgensen (Yale Univ) on polarizable force fields. He has authored and co-authored 240 journal publications (including 29 in Cell, Science, Nature, Nature subjournals and PNAS), and 26 patents, delivered 200+ invited talks at major conferences and universities worldwide, and chaired and co-chaired many conferences in computational biology, computational chemistry, and biophysics fields. He is part of the IBM Blue Gene team who won the 2009 National Medal on Technology and Innovation. He has won the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) in 2018, 2016, 2014, 2008 and 2005; IBM Outstanding Innovation Award in 2015 and 2012; Columbia University Hammett Award (for best graduates); and American Chemical Society DEC Award on Computational Chemistry. He is Editor-in-Chief of Current Physical Chemistry, Guest Editor of Nanoscale, Editor of (Nature) Scientific Reports, and Editorial Board Member of six other international journals. He also serves as Board of Directors, Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC), and Scientific Advisory Board, Center for Multiscale Theory and Simulation, University of Chicago. He was elected to AAAS Fellow (American Association of Advancement of Science) and APS Fellow (American Physical Society) in 2011, and IBM Distinguished Research Staff Member (DRSM) in 2014.

Integration of Materials Design, Additive Manufacturing and Machine Learning for Personalized Heart Surgery Planning and Optimization

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Abstract: ​This seminar presents a research study for personalized heart surgery planning and optimization with integration of advanced materials design, multi-material 3D printing, and machine learning techniques. In this study, a meta-material design approach was first developed to create a mechanical structure that can mimic mechanical behavior of human aortic valves. The tissue-mimicking heart valves were then fabricated using a multi-material 3D printing process. The 3D printed heart valves can be used for pre-surgery planning of heart disease treatment and intervention. The patient-specific heart valves can serve as “virtual patients” which can be used to generate treatment or surgery data for various patients and conditions. In this research, these 3D printed heart valves were used to augment data from relatively small number of available real patients to create more accurate predictive model with machine learning. This model can be used by physicians and surgeons to make more informed decisions for personalized heart surgery planning and optimization. This methodology and its effectiveness were demonstrated through an application case of planning of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) surgery.

Biographical Sketch: ​Dr. Chuck Zhang is the Harold E. Smalley Professor at H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering of Georgia Institute of Technology. His current research interests include additive manufacturing, cyber-physical systems, and advanced composites/nanocomposites manufacturing and maintenance. Dr. Zhang has managed or conducted numerous research projects sponsored by major federal agencies including National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as industrial companies such as ATK, Cummins, Delta Air Lines and Lockheed Martin. He is a fellow of IISE. Dr. Zhang has published over 190 refereed journal articles and 220 conference papers. He also holds 24 U.S. patents.

A Tea Light Candle and the Global Waste Problem

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Abstract: In 2012, the World Bank estimated that each person living on planet earth produces approximately 1.2 kg waste per day amounting to 1.2 billion tons per year. By 2025 this number is expected to reach a staggering 2.2 billion tons, which raises the fundamental question:

What is and what happens to waste?

Most of the world’s population lives in developing countries where waste collection services do not work or are non-existent, and domestic burning of waste is a frequent disposal technique. Further, in many developing countries, even when waste is moved to dump sites, it is not uncommon for the material to be burned by open, uncontrolled fires.

In short, fire is the primary mode of waste disposal.

Fire provides volume reduction and prevents disease, but inefficient combustion brings its own hazards in the form of toxic/noxious gasses. In this talk I will discuss the work we have been doing at WPI related to burning hazardous waste cleanly and efficiently. More importantly, I will discuss the inception of the project, which started by observing the burning of a tea light candle and extended to a multi million-dollar effort fueled by students like you!

Biographical Sketch: Ali S. Rangwala is a professor in the department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) (2006 – present). He has a BS in Electrical Engineering, from the Government College of Engineering, Pune, India (2000), an MS in Fire Protection Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park (2002), and a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (2006). Professor Rangwala’s research interests are in the broad areas of environment, industrial fires, and explosion safety.