Semester/Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) Program

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Semester/Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) Program IDIS 10001-02, Credit: 0 CRN 37187 SURE Program at Purdue Calumet provides students an opportunity to work closely with faculty on research projects during the academic year and/or summer.  SURE supports active research participation of undergraduate students in ongoing research projects. These projects help to prepare students for graduate school and the workforce. Also, participating in research projects prepares students to think independently, collaborate with other students, gain hands-on experience, and apply theoretical knowledge gained in classroom to solve practical engineering problems. The students will be exposed to professional development, technical, and academic seminars. SURE links undergraduate students with faculty and graduate student mentors, and introduces them to advanced research tools at the frontier of engineering. In the ME/CE department, research opportunities exists in the areas of air pollution control, applied optics and sensors, biomechanics of red blood cell, combustion, computational fluids dynamics, electronics cooling, energy conservation. extraction/process metallurgy, fatigue fracture, finite element method, membrane technology, multi-phase reacting flows, nanofluidics, refrigeration and air conditioning, stress analysis, virtual reality visualization, and water resource system analysis. In ECE, opportunities are available in artificial networks, biomedical engineering, computer networks, control systems, digital communications, digital signal processing, electronics, energy conservation, information theory, image processing, large scale dynamical systems, medical imaging, neurosimulation, optical switching, power system, robotics, sensors, speech signal analysis, virtual reality, visualization and modeling.   Professors are encouraged to submit a title and description of their research project, preferred students’ major, desired experience, and number of positions, to the relevant department. Project description will be posted on the Engineering website and emailed to the students. Professors are also encouraged to recruit students from their classes. Students are encouraged to seek research opportunities with faculty members to discuss ongoing projects and possibility of working in the research lab. During the academic year, students will conduct research activities of approximately 10 hours per week. During the summer, students will perform about 30 hours per week of research activities.   Benefits: 1. Engage in hands-on research, 2. Work side-by-side with faculty and graduate students on innovative research, 3. Add to your undergraduate experience & gain a competitive advantage for the future, 4. Provides excellent foundation for future graduate work, 5. Discover pathways to graduate school, and 6. Students may earn a one-time semester stipend through SURE program. 7. In addition, students will be enrolled in a zero-credit no-cost IDIS course that will appear on their transcript. Eligibility: 1. Must be a sophomore or Junior, 2. Must be enrolled during the semester for at least 12 credits, 3. Must be committed to work on project for at least one semester. Students that fail to satisfy this condition will become ineligible for participation in the future, and 4. A GPA of 3.2 and above. Selection Criteria Selection will be made by a faculty committee based on: 1. The academic record, 2. The Availability of funds, 3. The Limitation of no more than 6 participants per semester 4. The student’s short Statement of Purpose for the research project, 5. The recommendation by the faculty member who will supervise the project, and 6. To expose more students to research opportunities, priority will be given to first-time applicants. Stipend: Students are expected to conduct research approximately 10 hrs per week throughout the semester and will be paid through the SURE program and faculty member at the rate of $8.50 per hour. Requirements for Student Participants: 1. Set up research schedule with faculty advisor and graduate mentor, if any 2. Weekly meeting with faculty advisor 3. Submit an abstract, research plan, project schedule, milestones, and bi-weekly progress report to your faculty advisor and the appropriate department head 4. Make a 10-15 minutes presentation on your research project results to the engineering faculty and interested students, and provide a copy of the PowerPoint presentation to the appropriate department head 5. Submit a poster presentation to PUC’s student research day. Required for SURE participants in the spring semester, and also for fall semester participants who are on campus in the following spring. Deadlines: Applications are due by the 2nd Friday of each semester. At the end of each project, students are expected to develop a paper, poster, and/or presentation. If you have questions or concerns about SURE, please contact: George Nnanna 219-989-2472 or 989-2071.     SURE PROJECTS – FALL 2011   Project Title: Climate Change analysis using daily rainfall data for Indiana Undergraduate Research Position Faculty: Chandramouli Viswanathan Mentors: Le Zeng, Graduate Student Global climate changes cause several influences. To analyze the climate change characters, several indices were proposed. Using long term daily rainfall data these indices were calculated. Indices such as RX1day (maximum one-day precipitation), RX5 day (maximum five day precipitation), SDII (simple daily intensity index), R10mm, R20mm (count of precipitation days with rainfall rate greater than 10 mm and 20 mm), Rnnmm (count of days where rainfall rate is greater than a threshold value), CDD (consecutive dry days), CWD (consecutive wet days), R95pTOT (percentage of wet days) and R99pTOT (percentage of extremely wet days) are popularly used to study the climate changes. Student will work with Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio state rainfall data and analyze these indices to check the trends in the region.   Project Title: Wind Energy Study Undergraduate Research Position Faculty: Xiuling Wang Mentor: Xiuling Wang Wind energy, as one of the cleanest renewable energy, is becoming increasingly important. Both the installed wind power and the generated energy are increasing by 30% per year world-wide. In wind energy study, students will be exposed to various related research topics: economic analysis for wind energy analysis; 3-D wind fields construction; aerodynamics analysis for wind turbine blades; weak effects analysis for wind turbine blade.   Project Title: Parametric Study of Hybrid Spring-Membrane System for Fouling Control Undergraduate Research Position Faculty: George Nnanna Mentors: Nina Zhou, PhD student; and Dr. Yu, PostDoc. Filtration technology such as membrane has been commonly used to remove physical-chemical-biological contaminants from water to meet the standards set by Safe Water Drinking Act. Membrane is a permselective barrier or interface between two phases: phase 1, the feed or upstream side and phase 2, permeate or downstream side. Feed solution permeates through the membrane while the contaminants are retained resulting in fouling of the membrane surface. The mechanisms of fouling include the pore blockage, the cake layer formation, and the concentration polarization. The rapid initial drop in permeate (pure water) flux is attributed to the quick blocking of membrane pores by retained particles when feed solutions flow cross the membrane surface. Further flux decline after pore blockage is due to the formation and growth of the cake layer on the membrane surface as the amount of the retained particles increases. Concentration polarization is also an important factor causing flux decrease. It is a phenomenon in which the solute or particle concentration in the vicinity of the membrane surface is higher than that in the bulk. Fouling often results in reduced system performance, the decrease in permeate flux and the increase in pressure drop due to fouling adversely impact the membrane filtration efficiency. Therefore, it is important to minimize the fouling of the membrane. The aim of this investigation is to mitigate fouling using hybrid spring-membrane system with emphasis on the effect of coil and wire diameter, stiffness, and pitch on the rate of fouling. The presence of spring induces turbulent; alter flow pattern and the rate of particle deposition on the membrane surface. In the membrane filtration system, the spring will be inserted or attached to the channels of the tangential flow filtration module in order to increase the turbulence in the channels and to prevent the occurrence of concentration polarization. Project Title: Indoor Air Quality Simulation Undergraduate Research Position Faculty: Xiuling Wang Mentor: Xiuling Wang Indoor air quality (IAQ) has a big impact on human health – most people spend 90 percent of their time indoors whether at home, at work or in a car traveling. Researchers have pointed out that indoor air pollution problem can be much worse than outdoor air pollution problems. Accurate and fast predict indoor contaminant dispersion will become important in risk assessment. In this research project, students will learn how to apply Computational Fluid Dynamics in set up a numerical model in simulating indoor air quality related contaminant dispersion problems under different scenarios; conducting parametric study to find out the most influencing parameters, experimental data will be provided to validate and verify the numerical results.   Project Title: A New approach to the Calculation of Deflection and Crack opening in a flexure member   Phase1: According to the findings and observations, the current methods (Branson’s Equation[1] and the recommended Bischoff’s Equation[2]) underestimate the deflection of concrete beams reinforced with high-strength steel bars. This conclusion is based on the comparison between the experimental results and the parametric studies that were performed within NCHRP 12-77 project. Phase2: The concept of bar spacing which is based on crack control in concrete beams reinforced with conventional steel bars (A615 ASTM)[3] may not be valid for concrete beams reinforced with other type of reinforcement. For instance, one of the advantages of using high-strength steel bars, is to decrease the reinforcing ratio. Therefore, the bar spacing formulation should be different from the physical based model proposed by Frosch[4],[5] and adopted by ACI. A new method of calculating the crack opening is proposed based on mechanical properties and strength of materials in reinforced concrete members. This new approach will open doors to the ongoing research studies on crack control in reinforced concrete. This research proposal in its preliminary state needs a comprehensive literature review on crack opening and deflection. The review should include all available experimental flexure tests and the specification of test design (Concrete type, reinforcement bar type, reinforcement bar ratio, bar spacing and including all other dimension and applied loads) and provide all available resulting data such as crack opening, crack width, deflection and moment curvature of the flexure member. [1] Branson, D . E ., 1963, “Instantaneous and Time- Dependent Deflections of Simple and Continuous Reinforced Concrete Beams”, Research Report No. 7, Alabama Highway Department, Montgomery, Aug. 1963, 94 pp. [2] Bischoff P. H. 2007, “Rational Model for Calculating Deflection of Reinforced Concrete Beams and Slabs”, Can. J. Civil Engineering. 34, pp. 992-1002. [3] ASTM A615/A615M-06. Standard Specification for Deformed and Plain Carbon-Steel for Concrete Reinforcement. Conshohocken, PA: ASTM International, 2006. [4] Frosch, R. J. , 2001, “Flexural Crack Control in Reinforced Concrete, Design and Construction Practices to Mitigate Cracking”, SP 204, American Concrete Institute, Farmington Hills, Mich., pp. 135-154. [5] Frosch, R. J., 1999, “Another Look at Cracking and Crack Control in Reinforced Concrete”, ACI Structural Journal, V. 96, No. 3, May-June, pp. 437-442.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 September 2011 )

 

< Prev		Next >