November 2009 - College of Engineering and Computing ...

mechanical
engineering
message
from the
chair
Jamil Khan
Alumni and friends of Gamecock
Mechanical Engineering, we have just
started a new academic year with a record
number of graduate and undergraduate
students. Our undergraduate enrollment
stands at 393, and graduate student
enrollment stands at 65 on campus and
51 APOGEE students. More than half
of our on-campus graduate students are
pursuing doctoral degrees.
In August, the departmental faculty
met for a half-day retreat to assess our
strengths and weaknesses, and to plan for
the future. It was obvious that all vectors
for the department are pointing up. The
number and quality of students have gone
up. Two of our students, robert Kallgren,
and Jared rothell, were awarded scholarships
from the National Academy for
Nuclear Training worth $2,500. Robert,
as well as Brian Gottfried, received nationally
competitive DOE Scholarships
of $5,000.
Research funding is increasing. Abdel
Bayoumi received about $1 million in
new funding for his Condition Based
Maintenance (CBM) research from the
SC National Guard, and Mike Sutton
received $750,000 in new funding from
the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR) for performing research on
metallic and composite aero-structures.
Other faculty members receiving research
awards include Sarah Baxter, Fanglin
Chen, Victor Giurgiutiu, Travis Knight,
Chris Li, Jed Lyons, and Tony reynolds.
Recently, Chris Li was appointed as a CEC
Distinguished Professor in Mechanical
Engineering. Arash Kheradvar was selected
by the Council on Cardiovascular
Surgery and Anesthesia as a finalist for
the Vivian Thomas Young Investigator
Award. Yuh Chao co-authored a paper
that received the best Technical Paper
Award in the ASME Pressure Vessels and
Piping Division Conference.
During the last academic year, recruiting
new faculty members was one of the
department’s primary goals. Despite
budget woes, we made a concerted effort
to fulfill this goal, making offers to Xinyu
ME CHAIr continued on page 11
nano and micro
thermo-fluidic
technologies cool rising heat
Thermal management of electronics is posing
significant challenges with advancements
in micro-processors and other high-density
power electronics. The heat flux from the
power devices has risen significantly in the
past few years, approaching 500 W/cm 2 . The
power consumption trend shows that the
relentless increase in heat density will keep
on rising with advancement of technology.
Conventional forced air-cooled designs are
no longer adequate to remove such high heat
fluxes because they are beyond the current limits
of air-cooling technology (approximately
80-100 W/cm 2 ). Novel cooling solutions are
in demand for thermal management.
Many cooling schemes have been examined
in recent years in pursuit of thermal
solutions to meet this demand. Of these advanced
cooling solutions, micro thermo-fluidic
technology, which puts liquid phase-change
properties to work in microscale structures, is
considered one of the most effective solutions
for those devices demanding very high-flux
heat removal.
In the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
a research group led by Dr.
Jamil Khan is working on nano and microscale
technologies-based thermal solutions
for thermal control of power electronics. In
addition to Dr. Khan, the group currently
consists of four graduate students and a
post-doctoral researcher. Ongoing research
programs include enhancement of liquid
micro-channel cooling and investigation of
thermal physical properties of nanofluids.
Enhancement of liquid micro-channel
introducing new faculty: chen li
Dr. Chen Li, a new faculty member in the Department
of Mechanical Engineering, joined
the faculty in August 2009. He received his
Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY,
where he conducted research in micro/nanoscale
two-phase heat transfer under Professor
G.P. “Bud” Peterson, a pioneer in two-phase
PAGE 10 • noVEMBEr 2009 • momentum • college of engineering and computing
cooling, supported by Electric Ship Research
and Development Consortium (ESRDC),
is to develop an innovative cooling technology
for the removal of a large amount of heat
from a small area. It has a dense package with
higher heat transfer coefficient. Depending
on the application, the liquid flow inside the
micro-channels can be single-phase or twophase.
By combining micro-channel flow
with periodic micro-impingement jets, the
micro-channel heat transfer performance is
further enhanced through either introducing
turbulence into single-phase flow, or stabilizing
the flow instability of two-phase flow.
Using nanofluids is another novel
concept for enhancing a coolant’s thermal
characteristics. Nanofluids, consisting
of nanometer-sized solid particles or fibers
dispersed in liquids, have recently been
demonstrated to have great potential for improving
the heat transfer properties of liquids.
Sponsored by USAF, thermal characteristics
of copper-II and zinc-oxide nanofluids have
been investigated for flow over a heated flat
plate. The laboratory experiments at USC investigate
the thermal transport properties of
nanofluids, including thermal conductivity,
viscosity, and convective heat transfer coefficient.
In the near term, the group’s research
focuses on cooling of power electronics and
IC packages. But the research for other high
heat flux removal is also a major consideration
for systems such as laser diodes, fuel cell, and
future nuclear fusion and fission reactors. F
heat transfer on nano-interfaces.
During his doctoral study, Dr. Li achieved
the highest reported capillary evaporation
heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux
(CHF) and successfully demonstrated the
effectiveness of nanostructured interfaces in
significantly promoting nucleate boiling for
the first time.