Dr. Greg Odegard was recently presented wit the 2015 Exceptional Graduate Faculty Mentor Award from the Graduate School at the 2015 Graduate Research Awards Banquet. This Merit Award for Exceptional Graduate Student Mentor recognizes advocacy for graduate students, being available and encouraging to students, and creativity/interdisciplinary collaboration in new opportunities for graduate student.
The ME-EM Graduate Seminar speaker on Thursday, February 26 at 4:00 in 103 EERC will be Dr. J. G. Pharoah professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Fuel Cell Research Centre at the Royal Military College of Canada at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
The title of his presentation will be ‘Multi-Scale Modelling Tools for Fuel Cell Development’.
Fuel cells inherently involve phenomena occurring over a wide range of length scales, from the molecular scale on electro-catalyst surfaces through various scales of porous media including catalyst layers, micro-porous layers porous transport layers, to gas supply channels within a cell and finally to the manifolds at the stack scale. In total, length scales spanning about 10 orders of magnitude are of interest to the fuel cell developer.
This talk will discuss the various tools developed to represent phenomena occurring from the catalyst scale to the stack scale and methods for coupling information from the various scales. These tools include the ability to model arbitrary porous materials comprising multiple solid phases and to model transport phe-nomena and electrochemical reactions in these materials using both virtual porous media and experimen-tally determined geometries. At the next scale, full cell models are developed and are capable of modelling both beginning of life performance and selected degradation mechanisms. Finally, at the largest scale en-tire stack simulations are carried out and can be used to explore temperature distributions within a stack as well as stack manifold design. The talk will highlight and present the open source software developed for these analysie and discuss the application of the tools to the design of superior fuel cells.
J. G. Pharoah is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Queen’s—RMC fuel cell research centre, which he co-founded. Dr. Pharoah obtained his M. A. Sc and Ph D degrees in Mechanical Engi-neering from the University of Victoria’s Institute for Integrated Ener-gy Systems and has been working with energy systems, with an empha-sis on fuel cells, for more than a decade. Dr. Pharoah has been invited to spend some time at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and has given invited and keynote lectures at many international conferences, universities, and companies. He regularly sits on the scientific commit-tees of international conferences and works actively with several lead-ing fuel cell developers to help overcome the challenges necessary for the large scale commercial success of fuel cells in clean energy systems.
Engineering researcher’s prosthetic ankle could see where it’s going.
The 2015 Winter Baja was held Saturday, Feb. 21, near the Student Development Complex at Michigan Technological University.
The University of Iowa car #48 came in first place, followed by Northern Michigan University car #40 at 2nd Place and Ferris State University car #76 at 3rd Place. Other standings are listed below showing the place and laps completed. In the dynamic event University of Michigan Car #1 came in first followed by University of Iowa Car # 68 at 2nd and University of Michigan Car #161 at 3rd.
The ME-EM Graduate Seminar speaker on Thursday, February 19 at 4:00 in 103 EERC will be Dr. Fabio Semperlotti from University of Notre Dame.
The title of his presentation will be ‘Structural Dynamics Tailoring for Health Monitoring and Acoustic Metamaterials Applications’.
In recent years, structural systems of interest for many mechanical and aerospace applications have been required to integrate new functionalities ranging, for example, from structural health monitoring, to adaptive vibration and acoustic control, to energy harvesting. In many cases, new technologies (e.g., transducers, adaptive elements) have been simply retrofitted to the existing structures. Although for structures already deployed in the field this approach might be the only viable option, the development of future structural systems could greatly benefit from the use of a concurrent design where the host structure is conceived as an integral part of the subsystems and developed to enhance their individual as well as combined performance and functionalities.
This presentation will focus on the concept of structural dynamics tailoring achieved via geometric inhomogeneity as a means to design structural systems that support, and possibly enhance, the integration of advanced functionalities. Although applications to several different fields are possible, this talk will present the theoretical and numerical implementation of this concept for the design of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems and acoustic metamaterials. The SHM application will show how a relatively recent tomographic technology, known as impediography, can be combined with the concept of structural tailoring to enable highly sensitive damage identification with a very limited number of sensors. The structural tailoring approach is then applied to the synthesis of thin-walled acoustic metamaterials obtained via a periodic distri-bution of geometric tapers. These materials offer a largely reduced fabrication complexity, compared to the traditional multi-phase design, while still maintaining the same high-level dynamic characteristics. Numerical results will be presented to illustrate the many interesting disper-sion and propagation properties offered by such materials.
Dr. Fabio Semperlotti is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Notre Dame. He received a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 2000 and a M.S. in Astronautic Engineering (summa cum laude) in 2002 from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Later, he completed his doctoral studies at the Pennsylvania State University where in 2009 he received a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering.
Prior to joining Penn State, Dr. Semperlotti served (2000-2006) as structural a few European aerospace industries, including the French Space Agency (CNES), working on the structural design of space launch systems and satellite platforms.
After graduating from Penn State, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Penn State-Vertical Lift Research Center and, later on, at the University of Michigan conducting research in Adaptive Structures and Structural Health Monitoring.
Dr. Semperlotti joined the AME department at Notre Dame in 2011 where he started the Structural Health Monitoring and Dynamics laboratory (SHMD). Together with his research group, he conducts research on several aspects of structures and materials including structural dynamics and wave propagation, smart and adaptive structures, structural health monitoring, energy harvesting. His re-search has received funding from US ARMY, DARPA, National Science Foundation, Air Force, and industrial sponsors. He was recently awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2015) for his research on Structural Health Monitoring and the Air Force Office of Research Young Investigator Program (YIP) (2015) for his research on acoustic metamaterials.
Business Insider ranks Michigan Tech 15th in the nation for graduates’ mid-career salaries.
The ME-EM Graduate Seminar speaker on Thursday, January 29 at 4:00 in 103 EERC will be Jeremy Worm, Research Engineer from Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics, MTU. The title of his presentation will be ‘Hands-On Education with the Michigan Tech Mobile Lab’.
The Michigan Tech Mobile Lab is a one-of-a-kind educational facility. The lab is used for providing hands-on discovery based educational experiences. As such, the lab is used for teaching hands-on college cours-es, professional short courses, and STEM outreach. With light and heavy duty ground vehicles, powertrain test cells, a chassis dynamometer, benchtop activities, and advanced instrumentation systems, the lab can be used for a wide range of engineering subjects. This seminar will provide an overview of the lab, its ca-pabilities, and will look at the specifics of one of the hands-on experiments students conduct in the lab.
Jeremy Worm, is a Research Engineer and Instructor in the Department of Me-chanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Tech, where he re-ceived his BS and MS degrees. Prior to joining the Michigan Tech Staff, Jeremy was a Senior Engineer at GM Powertrain. At GM Jeremy focused on combus-tion analysis, development of variable valve timing systems and operational strategies, and was the Lead Development Engineer for a new engine in a hybrid vehicle. At Michigan Tech, Jeremy remains active in the field of powertrain re-search, has developed and teaches several courses in the area of powertrain re-search and hybrid vehicles, and directs the Michigan Tech Mobile Lab. Jeremy is a licensed Professional Engineer, has authored or co-authored 25 publications, has 2 patents, has received a best paper award, and has been inducted into the Michigan Tech Academy of Teaching Excellence.
by Mike Meyer, director, William G. Jackson CTL
The Dean’s Teaching Showcase nominee for this week comes from the College of Engineering. Dean Wayne Pennington has chosen to recognize Gordon Parker, the John and Cathi Drake Professor in the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department. Both Pennington and MEEM chair Bill Predebon praised Parker as “a great success story of the flipped classroom approach.” Gordon has effectively implemented the flipped classroom model in both a senior level and graduate level controls course, and now has more than 30 video clips that are being used world-wide.
The ME-EM Graduate Seminar speaker on Thursday, January 22 at 4:00 in 103 EERC will be Nancy Barr, M.S. from Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics, MTU.
Strong Communication Skills are Critical for Success
Regardless of professional title, strong communication skills are critical for success. A key component of graduate education is the development of a professional identi-ty through a variety of communication opportunities, from research project presenta-tions in courses to conference papers and presentations. Those students in the pro-ject, thesis, or PhD track will have to prepare a lengthy written paper documenting their research and orally defend their work to an audience. This seminar will provide information to help students understand the importance of three factors – under-standing their audience, developing time management skills, and organizing their thoughts – in their ultimate success as engineers and researchers.
Nancy Barr is the Senior Design and Technical Communications Advisor for the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department at Michigan Technological University. She teaches technical communica-tion at the undergraduate and graduate level and assists faculty in creating assignments that encourage communication and critical thinking skill de-velopment in disciplinary courses. She earned a master of science in rhetoric and technical communication from MTU and is now working to-wards a PhD in rhetoric, theory, and culture at MTU. Her research fo-cuses on graduate teaching assistant training and the use of portfolios to assess curriculum changes.
Several staff members were honored with Michigan Tech Staff Council Making a Difference Awards at an awards program in the MUB Wednesday.
Team of Amanda Cadwell, Christina Sarazin (MEEM), Catherine Burns and Lori Weir.