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.
ME graduate student Dan Wang and Professor Xu Chen won the Best Paper (Theory) of the 2018 International Symposium on Flexible Automation (ISFA) for their paper titled “Synthesis and Analysis of Multirate Repetitive Control for Fractional-order Periodic Disturbance Rejection in Powder Bed Fusion.”
The ISFA started in 1986 under the co-sponsorship of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers (ISCIE) in Japan. The symposium focuses on automation technologies that are essential to meet the increasing requirements of modern manufacturing and other related fields, such as dynamical systems, robotics, logistics, biomedical systems, and healthcare systems.
The 2018 symposium was held in Kanazawa, Japan from July 15 to July 19. Every year the symposium recognizes two best papers appearing in the Proceedings and presented at the Symposium. One award emphasizes contribution to theory, and the other emphasizes significant or innovative applications/practice. Criteria for selection include the quality of the written and oral presentation, the technical contribution, timeliness, and practicality. Each award consists of a certificate and an honorarium of $1,000.
Wang and Chen’s paper discusses control approaches to advance the quality of repetitive energy deposition in powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing, pertaining specifically to the repetitive deposition of the laser or electron beam energy. It addresses an intrinsic limitation in control schemes that can leverage the periodicity of task patterns to significantly improve system performance. The long-term impacts will include greater quality assurance of the manufactured parts, new capabilities for large-scale 3D printing of extreme materials, and smarter machines and automation in additive manufacturing processes.
Two ME professors received the 2018 National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, which is the Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty.
Prof. Xu Chen’s award will support his research on thermal modeling, sensing, and controls to enable new generations of powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing. In contrast to conventional machining, where parts are made by cutting away unwanted material, additive manufacturing — also called 3D printing — builds three-dimensional objects of unprecedented complexity by progressively adding small amounts of material. PBF is a popular form of AM for fabricating complex metallic or high-performance polymer parts. This CAREER project will create new knowledge critical for substantially higher accuracy and greater reproducibility in PBF and AM. Building on innovations to model and control the thermal mechanical process, the research will illuminate ways to mitigate quality variations on the fly, and provide new feedback-centric control paradigms to engineer the layered deposition of thermal energy, which is imperative for quality and reproducibility. PBF parts are increasingly preferred in applications ranging from advanced jet-engine components to custom-designed medical implants. The outcomes of this project will facilitate fabrication of products to benefit the US economy and improve quality of life. More broadly, methods and tools developed from this research has the potential to drastically impact the manufacturing of a wide range of components for the energy, aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and biomedical industries that can benefit from short-run high-quality production.
Prof. Norato’s award will support fundamental research to formulate a design framework to systematically incorporate geometric design rules and manufacturing cost considerations into the computational design of structures. In particular, the techniques advanced in this project belong to a group of techniques called topology optimization, in which a computer program finds the optimal shape of a structural component or an architected material. This research will enable the conceptual design and optimization of lightweight, high-performance, and economically-viable structures with applications across a wide range of engineering industries. The new design capabilities will have the potential to significantly reduce manufacturing and R&D costs and thereby increase the economic competitiveness of American manufacturers. Prof. Norato is also a recipient of the 2017 ONR Young Investigator Award.
Both awards are for five years and approximately $500,000 (minimum), and have an outreach component towards K-12 students and people from underrepresented communities.
More details about the research being developed in Prof. Thanh Nguyen’s research group can be found in UConn Today.
Dr. Xinyu Zhao has been awarded an American Chemical Society Grant through the Petroleum Research fund for her research entitled “A computational study of the lean blow-off mechanisms for a bluff-body stabilized premixed flame.” The fund supports research directly related to petroleum and fossil fuels at nonprofit institutions around the world.
Increasingly stringent emission requirements have recently generated a great deal of interest in lean and stable combustors, i.e. combustors that manipulate air-fuel ratios to increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions while maintaining stable combustion. One way to stabilize flames in a combustor is through bluff bodies, but the events that lead to lean blowoff (flame extinction) remain unclear due to a variety of factors that require consideration (e.g. highly-transient turbulent flow fields and finite-rate chemistry).
Professor Zhao’s research aims to further the understanding of this phenomenon by using a large-eddy simulation to model and investigate a bluff-body stabilized lean premixed propane flame undergoing intense turbulence. UConn ME colleagues in Professor Baki Cetegen’s group carry out the experiments using laser diagnostics. The proposed modeling study allows flame characteristics such as turbulent flame speed, flame surface densities, strain rates, and various chemical and flow time scales relevant to blowoff to be studied and compared with real world experiments. Discovering the key time scales that lead to blowoff could yield controlling strategies and operation conditions for bluff-body stabilized flames.
Recently Professor Zhao also received the Young Investigator (YIP) Award from the Air Force Office of Science and Research. Read more about her research on her website.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) has honored Professor Xinyu Zhao as one of just 43 scientists and engineers awarded YIP grants for her research project titled “Pockets in Highly Turbulent Premixed Flames: Physics and Implications on Modeling.” The grant is worth a total of $450,000 over three years and is intended to foster the research of young investigators in science and engineering.
Dr. Zhao’s research aims to understand the underlying physical processes of highly turbulent premixed flames, which impact the efficiency and stability of modern aeronautical engines.
The investigation targets two specific “pockets”: the fresh-mixture pockets on the product side of the flame (“FiP”) and the product pockets on the fresh mixture side of the flame (“PiF”). The existence of these pockets is a distinctive feature of flames within the broken reaction zones, and is hypothesized to contribute to the deviation of the flame statistics from those within the flamelet regimes.
Aiding the current understanding of combustion in aeronautical engines could have far reaching impacts on a number of fields and industries and would be of great benefit to the Air Force. A better understanding of the factors that affect combustion can eventually allow engineers to improve the efficiency of these engines. You can read more about Professor Zhao’s research on her laboratory’s website.
All six courses for Content Areas 1, 2, and 3 must be from different academic departments/units. For Content Area 4, two courses are required. These two courses may be from the same department. One can be double counted (+) from Content Area 1 or 2. One must be an international course (I). (More information on the General Education Requirement)
9 credits in 2000 level or higher ME Courses which are not used to satisfy any other requirement. (More information on the Mechanical Engineering Requirement)
This requirement is met by 6 credits in 2000 level or higher courses in any Engineering department or from Mathematics, Statistics, Physical and Life Sciences as listed in the UConn Undergraduate Catalog.
All ME students are required to take two writing (W) courses, i.e., ME 4973W plus one other before graduation. (See the UConn Undergraduate Catalog under “Academic Regulations”).
6 credits in 1000 (100) or higher level Mathematics, Statistics, Physical and Life Sciences as listed in the UConn Catalog meet this requirement. Courses at the 2000 level can also be used to meet the Professional Requirement. Some restrictions apply. (More information on the Math or Science Requirement)
To satisfy the language requirement, a student has to present either 3 years intermediate level of one foreign language (high school) or 2 semesters (college) of one foreign language.
9 credits in 3000 (200) level or higher Mechanical Engineering courses which are not used to satisfy any other requirement. No more than one ME 3999 course may be used toward meeting this requirement. This course work may also be applied towards a minor.
Any course meets this requirement except those listed under restrictions in the UConn Undergraduate Catalog – Engineering Section.
Each student must complete a Plan of Study form in the first semester of the junior year. Plan of Study forms detail how a student will meet curricular requirements.
Bottleneck courses are prerequisites to other courses. Students should pay extra attention to these courses when considering their curricular plan as a delayed bottleneck course can affect the graduation date. Example bottleneck courses are ME 2233, ME 3250, CE 2120, and CE 3110. The ME Curriculum Map in the ME Course can be used to identify bottleneck courses.
Undergraduate Admissions offers a list of UConn equivalencies of courses transferred from 35 colleges/universities in Connecticut.
Students may choose to focus their 3 required ME electives (taken in the Junior/Senior years) in one Area of Concentration: 1) Aerospace, 2) Dynamic Systems and Control, 3) Energy and Power, 4) Design and Manufacturing. (More information on the ME Areas of Concentration)
The requirements of the home department of each major will determine double major requirements. Generally, the number of credits should satisfy both majors. The student must meet the requirements of both, but will not need 128+128=256 credits because many courses can be counted for both majors. A separate Plan of Study form must be prepared and submitted for approval to each department.
Students may earn two separate bachelor degrees from two different schools or colleges of the University. Students must meet the requirements of both schools/colleges, and a Plan of Study form must be submitted to each department for each degree.
15 credits are needed in order to qualify for a minor. However, a minor in Materials Science & Engineering requires 16 credits due to a one-credit lab course. Math Minor (optional) In addition to the 2 Math courses (Math 1132Q and 2211) listed in ME Requirements, three additional courses (9 credits) are necessary for a math minor. Please read the UConn Undergraduate Catalog “Minors – Mathematics” for details. (Note: “Pass/Fail” is not allowed except for credits beyond 128).
A program designed to improve learning outcomes for students in Engineering and eventually other STEM fields has been awarded a $178,384 grant from the Hubbell Foundation in Shelton, CT. The proposal, “Improving Educational Outcomes for Undergraduate Students in Engineering: The UConn Lifelong Learning Project” is a collaboration of the School of Engineering and the School of Nursing, with the support of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to improve the success of undergraduate students, particularly underrepresented students. The PIs for the program are Daniel Burkey, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and Diversity for Engineering, Kevin McLaughlin, Program Director for the Engineering Diversity Program and Thomas Van Hoof, Associate Professor of UConn’s Schools of Nursing and Medicine.