Thermal Engineering Lab

Vanderbilt University

On this page

• Calendar
• Facilities
• Equipment List
• Graduate Guidelines

External Links

• ThermalHUB.org
• Ultrasonics tutorial
• Whitesides' paper writing

Resources

Forms

• Speech evaluation form
• Travel worksheet
• Purchase request form

Lab Calendar

Facilities

The Thermal Engineering Lab at Vanderbilt consists of approximately $900\unit{ft^2}$ of combined laboratory and office space for graduate and undergraduate student work. The experimental capability primarily consists of thermal characterization and test equipment including thermal cameras, pyrometers, thermistors, thermocouples, heat flux gauges and a Nikon D-70 digital image camera. Other equipment includes a constant temperature baths, various power supplies, pulse generators and data acquisition computers. The graduate student office space is equipped with networked desktop workstations (for each student), and laser and color printers. The bulk of the computational work is performed on Vanderbilt's shared cluster resource for scientific investigation The Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE) is built and operated by Vanderbilt faculty. ACCRE offers computing resources flexible enough to enable High Performance Computing applications in a wide variety of research and education areas. All ACCRE hardware resources are housed in the University's secure data center and administered by a team of ACCRE system administrators. In addition to the High Performance Computing system (described in detail below), ACCRE has mulitple terabytes of disk space and a robotic tape storage system. Vanderbilt University is an Internet2 member and a participant in the Abilene network. The TEL's participation in ACCRE varies with support. For a detailed description of the cluster and related hardware, see the ACCRE website

Equipment List

Item	Manufacturer
HotSpot II TC Welder	DCCCorporation
BNC-2120 DAQ Board	National Inst.
PDG-2510 Delay/Pulse Gen.	DEI
Model 19 Function Gen.	Wavetek
UP200S Ultrasonicator	Hielscher
LB600 Const. Temp. Bath.	Boekel-Grant
TS7300 Thermal Camera(-40-500C)	Mikron
Close Focus Lens M77X series	Mikron
TDS 2012 Oscilloscope	Tektronix
0-15 VDC Power Supply (3)
0-25 V Power supply
HotMux TC logger (8 channel)	DCCCorporation
Analog MS-2/12 Parastaltic Pump	Reglo
Model 230 Pressure Transducer	Setra
Optical Table (4'x3')
OS523-2 Pyrometer	Omega

Graduate Fellowships

Fellowships	Requirements	Link
Hertz Foundation	Last year of Undergraduate to First year Graduate	hertzfoundation.org
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship	Last year of Undergraduate to Second year Graduate, U.S. Citizen	nsf.gov
NDSEG	Last year of Undergraduate to Second year Graduate, U.S. Citizen or National	asee.org
SMART	Last year of Undergraduate to Second year Graduate, U.S. Citizen or National	asee.org
Computational Science Research Fellowship	Last year of Undergraduate to Second year Graduate, U.S. Citizen or National	krellinst.org
NASA Graduate Research Fellowship	U.S. Citizen	nasa.gov
Ford Foundation	U.S. Citizen or National	fordfound.org
EAPSI	Graduate, U.S. Citizen or National	nsf.gov
GEM	U.S. Citizen and a member of a minority group	gemfellowship.org
SME	None	sme.org
ASME Graduate Teaching Fellowship	Graduate, U.S. Citizen or National	asme.org
Association for Women in Science	Enrolled in a Ph.D. program at a U.S. university	awis.org
Argonne National Laboratory	U.S. Citizen or National	anl.gov

Graduate Student Guidelines

Overview

This document contains general guidelines for graduate students working in my research group. The document is not, and cannot be, comprehensive; but it should provide students with a framework for successful research.

Objectives of Academic Research

1. We seek to advance new and important knowledge in the field of engineering. We will often utilize the work of others, but our fundamental objective is to create new ideas and test them with sound engineering research.
2. We seek to communicate our ideas and results to the technical community. To this end, we will publish any work that substantially advances new knowledge in archival journals and conference proceedings.
3. We will be thorough and respectful in identifying and acknowledging the work of others. Each student must regularly monitor the available literature.
4. We will gain an appreciation for the excitement of discovery. To this end, we will encourage and assist each other in our projects.
5. We will teach each other through frequent interaction and exchange of ideas.

Research Project Overview

1. Each research project must begin with a thorough literature review. Vanderbilt has recently added many electronic resources that should simplify this task. Each student is expected to review literature on a weekly basis--put it into your schedule!
2. Each student must demonstrate creativity in proposing a research topic that should advance new knowledge. I will guide this process but will not assign thesis/dissertation topics. This approach ensures that each student has the opportunity to develop his/her unique ideas.
3. After a topic is selected, each student should attempt to provide a simple model (either theoretical, experimental, or computational) that verifies the feasibility of her/his concept.
4. After the demonstration of feasibility, each student should rigorously pursue the goals of his/her project. This process may take much time. However, the student must endeavor to maintain a consistently high level of motivation to complete the project.
5. The results of research should be publishable in archival journals. A M.S. thesis should produce at least one paper. A Ph.D. dissertation should produce at least three papers.

Other Comments

1. I will be available through weekly meetings and informal conversations. Students should never feel that they are imposing on my time.
2. Periods of frustration come with virtually any worthwhile scientific endeavor. Only hard work, intelligence, and creativity will enable students to overcome these frustrations. Simply waiting for problems to disappear never works.
3. Note that plagiarism defined as "copying or imitating the language, ideas, and thoughts of another author and passing off the same as one's original work" (Barnhart, 1968) is a violation of the Vanderbilt Honor System and unacceptable in my program.
4. Students are encouraged to submit applications for graduate fellowships. In particular, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRF) are near the end of fall semester. Not only will these fellowships offer a slightly higher stipend, the prestige of an award can be quite helpful after an advanced degree. The content of the application should be discussed prior to submission, but the submission should represent the work of the student.
5. Students are expected to publish their work. Because each project is different in terms of difficulty and maturity, no fixed schedule of publication is provided. This should be discussed regularly with me.

Coursework

The list below contains courses that are relevant to our research. Students should expect to take a significant cross-section of courses listed as Core to your particular program and Additional Thermo-Fluids. In addition, courses from several other areas are listed.

Core ME

Course	Title	Instructor
ME 326	Statistical Thermodynamics	Pitz
ME 363	Conduction and Radiation Heat Transfer	Walker

Additional thermo-fluids

Course	Title	Instructor
ME 265	Direct Energy Conversion	Strauss
ME 327	Energy Conversion Systems	Strauss
Che 311	Advanced Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
Che 312	Transport Phenomena	Jennings

Math and Numerical Methods

Course	Title	Instructor
ME 391	High Performance Computing for Engineers	Walker / Tackett
MATH 219	Applied Statistics
MATH 229	Advanced Enigineering Math
MATH 234	Initial and Boundary Value Problems
MATH 261	Complex Variables
MATH 292	Mathematical Physics
Che 310	Applied Math in Chemical Engineering
CE 307	Finite Element Analysis
CS 255	Intro to Numerical Mathematics
MATH 286	Numerical Analysis
MATH 288	Introduction to Optimization

Physics and Electrical Engineering

Course	Title	Instructor
PHYS 221	Classical and Modern Optics
PHYS 251a-b	Introductory Quantum Mechanics
PHYS 254	Physics of Condensed Matter
PHYS 305	Particle and Continuum Mechanics
EECE 283	Principles and Models of Semiconductor Devices
EECE 284	Integrated Circuit Technology and Fabrication
EECE 285	VLSI Design
EECE 301	Introduction to Solid State Materials
EECE 306	Solid-State Effects and Devices I	Schrimpf
EECE 307	Solid State Effects and Devices II	Schrimpf

Laboratory Instrumentation

Course	Title	Instructor
BME 271	Biomedical Instrumentation

Conferences

Conference	Time of Year	Notes
Thermes	January	held every four years (last in 2007)
ISHMT	January	held every other year (last in 2008)
Semitherm	March
MRS	April
ITherm	May	held every other year (last in 2008)
IECEC	May
AIAA TP	June
NSREC	July
Interpack	July	usually colocated with HTC
HTC	July	usually colocated with Interpack
ISTP	August
IMECE	November
IEDM	December

Last modified: Friday, 04-Sep-2009 11:29:30 CDT