This page is contains brief summaries of my research projects. Links are provided to more extensive descriptions where these are available. If you have any questions about my work feel free to or give me a call at (503) 725-4290.
A separate page lists my publications.
My current research interests are in improving engineering education and in collaborating with colleagues on heat transfer and fluid mechanics.
In collaboration with Thermogear, Inc. of Tigard, Oregon, and Professor Larry Crawshaw of the PSU Biology Department, we are developing a portable device for treatment of people who are hypothermic. The work is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research under the SBIR/STTR program.
This work resulted in the MSME Thesis of Peter Tonn, and a patent application.
The TIM tester project is described on a separate web page. The device measures the thermal resistance of interface materials used in electronics cooling applications.
We made substantial contributions to the design of a wind tunnel for full scale testing of class eight trucks for Freightliner, LLC. The wind tunnel has several innovative features that distinguish it from other designs for vehicle testing. Former graduate student Bhaskar Bhatnagar used Star-CD, a commercial CFD code to design the settling chamber, contraction, and the diffuser section downstream of the wall of fans. We also were heavily involved in the design of the test section and the transition from the test section to the fans.
The grand opening of the wind tunnel was on Tuesday, April 13, 2004. The press release from Freightliner gives an overview of the project. There are also some nice photos on the Freightliner web site.
The work resulted in Bhaskar's MSME Thesis and this paper presented at the 2004 ASME Heat Transfer and Fluids Engineering Conference
ESCO Corporation manufacturers components for heavy duty mining and construction equipment. We are working with ESCO, to better understand the flow in their quench tanks used to heat treat metal parts. Former graduate student Sergey Kernazhitskiy used Star-CD, a commercial CFD code to simulate isothermal flow in the quench tank. Although the operation of the quench tank is not isothermal, the uniformity of the flow field, especially as it is affected by the complex structures in the tank, can be studied without the complications due to boiling and heat transfer.
The work resulted in Sergey's MSME Thesis and this paper presented at the 2004 ASME Heat Transfer and Fluids Engineering Conference
My electronics cooling research is primarily involved applied experimental work on air-cooled equipment. I developed a Thermal Lab, which is a combined teaching and research facility. We have done projects for Credence, Astoria-Pacific, and PGE.
Graduate student Jason Leland and I developed a finite-volume code to optimize the design of a phase change heat sink. That work is described briefly elsewhere.
The Printed Circuit Board Convection Analysis Tools --the PCBCAT-- were developed under a three year grant from the Intel Research Council. The goal was to create a tool for analyis of flow over circuit boards that are confined in a small space where "small" is the distance normal to the circuit board.
The PCBCAT is a collection of control-volume finite-difference codes to simulate the convective heat transfer from electronic devices on printed circuit boards. Old unix binaries of the codes and user manuals are available for downloading.
Some day I would like to revive the PCBCAT and release binaries for more recent versions of PC and workstation operating systems. The method is still applicable.
We have investigated measurement techniques for determining the lumped, fluid-dynamic parameters of small orifices of the type found in ink-jet printers. The challenge is to measure the frequency response of mechanical systems that are significantly smaller than any available pressure sensor. Measurement of overall system behavior is possible with an impedance meter, but this does not allow sufficient isolation of component contributions. Our attempts to directly measure the pressure waves in the cavity driving the orifice were unsuccessful.
Sharon Berger finished with her Master's Thesis, which involves a comparison of numerical modeling techniques for simulating the dynamics of flow in ink jet manifolds.
Several years ago Scott Forbes and I wrote a Macintosh CFD application called QUICK 'n SIMPLE (QnS for short). This is a freeware program that solves 2D problems with a very intuitive and easy to learn user interface. QUICK = Quadratic Upstream Interpolation for Convective Kinematics. SIMPLE = Semi-Implicit Method for Pessure-Linked Equations. The code is dated and I haven't even tried running it myself in years.