Dr. Wei Sun, associate professor of Mechanical Engineering. In recent years, four graduate students working in Dr. Sun’s laboratory received prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, Department of Education Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need (GAANN) fellowships, American Heart Association fellowships, and Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Awards.  Dr. Sun’s students have garnered numerous Best Paper awards and other honors.

Dr. Hanchen Huang, Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Professor in Sustainable Energy (Mechanical Engineering) has been invited to serve on the Editorial Board for physics topics, for the journal Nature Scientific Reports.  During his two-year appointment, Dr. Huang will contribute toward the assessment of manuscripts for peer review, management of the peer review process and final editorial decisions regarding publication.

Professor emeritus (Mechanical Engineering) Lee Langston recently began a new column entitled Technologue, in the July-August 2013 issue (Vol. 101) of American Scientist.  For his first topic, Lee chose to profile “The Adaptable Gas Turbine,” covering the history, advantages and challenges, and current applications of gas turbines in jet engines and non-aviation applications such as natural gas pipeline compressors, ships and combined cycle power plants.

Dr. Robert Gao Awarded NSF GOALI

Dr. Robert X. Gao, the Pratt & Whitney Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and colleagues have received a three-year National Science Foundation GOALI (Grant Opportunities For Academic Liaison With Industry) grant to support collaborative research aimed at improving spare parts inventory management in the aircraft industry. UConn shares this three-year, $450,000 award with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Pratt & Whitney is the industry partner on the project. NSF developed the GOALI program as a means to catalyze industry-university partnerships and thus help to ensure that “intellectual capital and emerging technologies are brought together in ways that promote economic growth and an improved quality of life.” Dr. Gao explains that the goal of the project is to develop the basic science and practical tools to transform sensor measurements collected from a large number of distributed machines (such as jet engines) in the field into forecasting methodologies – along with inventory policies – for the spare parts required to maintain the equipment.  To achieve this goal, the researchers, aided by their colleagues at Pratt & Whitney, will conduct research along four pathways:

• Develop advanced sensing and signal interpretation methods to diagnose the health status of specific engine parts before they require replacement (versus the prevailing techniques that indicate the overall health of an engine only);
• Develop models that transform measurement data into predictions of time-to-overhaul and resource requirements;
• Develop algorithms that forecast part needs, and inventory policies that aggregate this information across equipment, with consideration to field usage and economic conditions; and finally,
• Create a simulation tool for the monitoring and maintenance of a large fleet to validate the methodology.

The research will culminate in improved forecasting and inventory management for commercial engine spare parts. Beyond these specific technical advancements, Dr. Gao says the project will “determine the economic impact of advanced sensing and predicting methodologies and the resulting improvement in decision-making, and potentially make the case for their pervasive installation. Although the developed models will primarily be validated within Pratt & Whitney’s business units, the models and methods will be beneficial to a wide array of manufacturing firms for whom after-sale service is a critical component of their business.” In addition to this GOALI research, Dr. Gao has received several other NSF grants since joining UConn in 2008 that focus on advancing the science base of sensing physics for advanced manufacturing (such as electrically-assisted precision micro-rolling and multivariate injection molding control) and building the cyber-physical infrastructure for a “Smart City.”

A research team lead by Dr. Robert Gao has won a “Best Paper Award” at the 2012 ASME/ISCIE International Symposium on Flexible Automation, held in St. Louis, MO in June 2012.  The paper, “Viscosity Measurement in Injection Molding Using a Multivariate Sensor,” describes a sensing method that quantifies multiple parameters critical to the quality control in polymer processing and wirelessly transmits the measured data through acoustic waves for remote information retrieval.  The paper results from a collaborative effort between Dr. Gao’s group at UConn (with graduate student Navid Asadizanjani and Assistant Research Professor Zhaoyan Fan) and Prof. David Kazmer in the Polymer Engineering department at UMass Lowell.  This research has been supported by the Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) Division of the NSF.

Breakthrough Research Published in Science In a recent Science journal article entitled “Strong, Light, Multifunctional Fibers of Carbon Nanotubes with Ultrahigh Conductivity,” Professor Anson Ma and colleagues from Rice University detail their recent breakthrough revolutionizing the use of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled cylinders of graphene sheets that have unprecedented mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. In the past, many of the potential real-world applications of CNTs remained unfulfilled because researchers experienced great difficulties dispersing and processing CNTs into macroscopic objects while maintaining their fascinating properties. To address this problem, Dr. Ma and colleagues from Rice developed a scalable fluid-based process for spinning CNTs into lightweight and multifunctional fibers. These fibers combine the mechanical strength of carbon fibers with the specific electrical conductivity of metals, opening up the exciting possibility of using CNTs in aerospace, field-emission, and power-transmission applications. The article can be accessed at:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6116/182 Dr. Ma, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the UK, joined UConn in August 2011 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering with a dual appointment in the Institute of Materials Science Polymer Program.  He recently received theDistinguished Young Rheologist Award from TA Instruments, which recognizes young faculty members who show exceptional promise in the field of rheology. Prior to that, he received the National Science Foundation Early Concept Grant for Exploration Research(EAGER) award, which focuses on investigating the use of nanoparticles in the delivery of cancer drugs.  –  By Heike Brueckner   Four Faculty Receive Large Faculty Grants Drs. Daniel Burkey, Mohammad Maifi Khan, Nejat Olgac and Zhuyin Ren were among 24 faculty to receive over $19,000 each in 2012 Faculty Large Grants from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation.  The grant program was established to help faculty better position themselves to apply for, and receive, extramural funding in support of their research and scholarly activities. The competitive grants will fund activities in diverse engineering areas:

• Dr. Daniel Burkey (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering) will apply his grant to the development of a pilot-scale osmotic heat engine for the department’s senior laboratory.
• Dr. Mohammad Khan (Computer Science & Engineering) will apply his grant toward work aimed at leveraging the digital cloud for real-time integration and analysis of sensor data for clinical and research applications.
• Dr. Nejat Olgac (Mechanical Engineering) will use his grant-monies for the prediction of thermo-acoustic instability (TAI) in combustion in a paradigm shift.
• Dr. Zhuyin Ren (Mechanical Engineering) will apply his grant monies toward large eddy simulation of turbulent combustion with detailed chemistry.