Polytechnic University
Polytechnic University has the expertise and capabilities to participate in the UTSR program and has been engaged in cooperative efforts with local industry in several Gas Turbine related projects. The expertise of faculty members from different engineering disciplines allows us to conduct research in a variety of gas turbine and energy related areas. Such areas include turbomachinery, combustion, thermo-fluids, systems and controls, and material properties and development, which are spread over Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Material Science disciplines. The University also has extensive computational facilities suitable for conducting many Gas Turbine related research programs.
The experimental facilities are organized in various laboratories. The Heat Transfer Laboratories include a phase change studies facility, an energy systems laboratory, and a radiation/optics laboratory. The Aerodynamics facilities include a 15 x 15 in. supersonic wind tunnel facility with a Mach number range of 1.75 to 4, a low speed wind tunnel, and a shock tube facility. The fluid mechanics laboratories, equipped with hot wire anemometry and Laser Doppler diagnostics equipment, include a number of low-speed wind tunnels, a non-Newtonian fluid mechanics facility with extensive flow visualization equipment, a flow measurement facility, and a combustion facility with Rayleigh scattering based diagnostics. The thermal radiation / optics laboratories include a short pulse laser laboratory that is shared with a faculty member in Chemistry and a thermal optics laboratory for studying fundamental radiation phenomena. The Ultrafast Laser Laboratory has an Nd:YAG/dye laser system that consists of a Coherent Antares cw mode-locked Nd:YAG oscillator (20W, 76 MHz, 100 ps), which is frequency doubled. The green second harmonic (2 W) pumps a Coherent Satori hybridly mode-locked, dispersion-comenated dye laser capable of producing pulses shorter than 200 fs with 3 nJ energy at 76 MHz repetition rate. In addition to the laser system, the laser laboratory maintains an assortment of support equipment, including a fast Tektronix DSA 602 oscilloscope, a Hammamatsu optical oscilloscope with 7 ps resolution, an Inrad autocorrelator with a resolution of 50 fs, fast photodiodes, several monochromators, a spectrophotometer, assorted electronic accessories, assorted optics and motorized translating stages. Also available is computerized data acquisition with LabView software for simple interfacing of different instruments and control. The Thermal Optics laboratory has high resolution microscopes, spectrometers, computerized data acquisition, and simulation software for predicting and analyzing radiation properties of thin films and other micro-configurations, as well as simulating thermal radiation transport.
In the Controls and Robotics areas, significant attention is devoted to the development of linear/nonlinear control strategies for systems subjected to uncertainties, actuator saturation, and time delays. System and control theoretic tools are being applied to develop algorithms for cooperative and autonomous control of multiple agents (e.g., spacecraft, unmanned air vehicles, etc.). Experimental efforts are devoted on mechatronics--synergistic integration of mechanical engineering, control theory, computer science, and electronics to manage complexity, uncertainty, and communication in engineered systems. On going experimental activities include web-enabled control of various laboratory test-beds, development of microcontroller-based low-cost, stand-alone DAC with GUI capabilities, and biologically inspired robotics. Laboratory facilities include DSP/PC/Embedded-DAC systems, a variety of microcontrollers, robotic manipulators, and numerous experimental test-beds for process control, active noise cancellation, earthquake simulation, rotating machinery fault-detection, factory automation, mobile robotics, etc.
Polytechnic University has a long standing policy and history of providing support to its research faculty for their research activities. This support comes in the form of providing graduate student assistance, travel funding, and proper faculty release time during the academic year.
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