Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering News

Jeff Naber (MEEM/ASPRC) is Principal Investigator on a project that has received a $99,752 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation. Greg Odegard (MEEM), Sheryl Sorby (MEEM), Kellie Raffaelli (CDI), and Michael Bowler (Humanities), are Co-PI’s on this one-year project entitled, “Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Emerging Disaster Engineering Encompassing Human Directed Expert Systems (ERC-DEES).”

By Sponsored Programs.

Extract

Disasters cause immense economic and human losses. Those persons in the communities most significantly impacted are the elderly, disabled, and those economically disadvantaged with limited resources and limited mobility.

Concurrently, man-made infrastructure is becoming more vulnerable due to aging and degradation, while weather extremes and terrorism threats are increasing the occurrence and impact of disasters.

Thus, there is a critical need to have rapid intelligence and an ability to deploy limited resources with maximum impact at the earliest stage of the disasters.

The proposed vision is to develop expert systems with autonomous agents directed by humans with rapid response capabilities in partnership with, and in support of, first responders, communities and their citizens, and local and federal agencies.

Read more at the National Science Foundation.

Jeff Naber (MEEM/ASPRC) is Principal Investigator on a project that has received a $481,013 research and development contract with the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC. Youngchul Ra (MEEM), Mahdi Shahbakhti (MEEM), Jeremy Worm (MEEM), Henry Schmidt (MEEM), Paul Dice (MEEM), and Joel Duncan (MEEM) are Co-PI’s on this project entitled, “A Compression-Ignition Mono-Fueled NG High-Efficiency, High-Output Engine for Medium and Heavy-Duty Applications.” This is the first year of a potential three-year project totaling $1,156,042.

By Sponsored Programs.

Jeff Naber has been nominated as an associate member of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) United States Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle efficiency and Energy sustainability (U.S. DRIVE) Committee.

It is a three year term starting September 2019. It involves direct meetings between the OEM’s and DOE’S Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) at a high level.

The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) tech team is part of the U.S. DRIVE partnership. This partnership is between the U.S. Council for Automotive Research LLS (USCAR) and the DOE.

Gurpreet Singh, Advanced Combustion Engines and Fuels R&D Program Manager, Vehicle Technologies Office, DOE, is the other co-chair. Other members of the team include combustion and emission control experts from FCA, GM and Ford as well as a broad spectrum of representatives from the DOE and U.S. national labs (Argonne, Oak Ridge, Sandia, NREL, Lawrence Livermore, Pacific Northwest).

The committee meets six times a year at the USCAR office in Southfield, MI, to discuss pre-competitive technology and research to improve engine efficiency while meeting emission standards.

Jeff Naber (ME-EM), the Richard and Elizabeth Henes Professor in Energy Systems and director of the Advanced Power Systems Research Center, has been appointed to the Executive Committee of the Automotive Research Center (ARC) by the center’s director Bogdan Epureanu.

The ARC is a US Army Center of Excellence for Modeling and Simulation of Ground Vehicles sponsored by Ground Vehicles Systems Center (formally TARDEC in Warren, Michigan) and led by the University of Michigan.

Susanta Ghosh (MEEM/MuSTI) is Principal Investigator on a project that has received a $170,604 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is titled “EAGER: An Atomistic-Continuum Formulation for the Mechanics of Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides.” This is a potential 19-month project.

By Sponsored Programs.

Extract

Two-dimensional materials are made of chemical elements or compounds of elements while maintaining a single atomic layer crystalline structure. Two-dimensional materials, especially Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs), have shown tremendous promise to be transformed into advanced material systems and devices, e.g., field-effect transistors, solar cells, photodetectors, fuel cells, sensors, and transparent flexible displays.

To achieve broader use of TMDs across cutting-edge applications, complex deformations for large-area TMDs must be better understood. Large-area TMDs can be simulated and analyzed through predictive modeling, a capability that is currently lacking.

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award supports fundamental research that overcomes current challenges in large-scale atomistic modeling to obtain an efficient but reliable continuum model for single-layer TMDs containing billions of atoms.

Read more at the National Science Foundation.

Orbion Space Technology, a company that develops plasma thrusters for satellites, announced a contract award from NASA‘s Science Mission Directorate. Under the contract, Orbion will develop advanced propulsion system components that will help spacecraft to rendezvous with, orbit, and conduct in-situ exploration of planets, moons, and other small bodies in the solar system. The NASA contract will focus on increasing the reliability of spacecraft thrusters while decreasing the cost to produce and fly them on space missions.

“More than 10,000 small satellites will be launched into space in the next 5-7 years. While the US has been a space-faring nation for 70 years, we are just now learning how to build spacecraft and their components on assembly lines like automobiles instead of like fragile science-fair experiments,” says Lyon B. King, Orbion’s CEO, “Orbion specializes in mass-manufacturing spacecraft hardware, and we are honored that NASA has selected Orbion to develop critical technology for solar system exploration.”

The award is administered by the NASA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program. In the first phase of the project, Orbion will utilize new 3D printing technology to create extremely high-temperature heating elements that can reduce the complexity and cost of critical spacecraft thruster components. The components will be tested in space-simulation chambers on the ground to prove their performance and reliability. In a follow-on, second phase of the contract, Orbion anticipates integrating the new heaters with their commercial plasma propulsion system for demonstration in space.

To learn more about Orbion, visit their website.

By MTEC SmartZone.