The Michigan State University Baja SAE Racing Team took third place at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) 2008 World Congress at Detroit's Cobo Hall in April.
The MSU Baja Race Team will be attending the » read more
The Mechanical Engineering Board of Visitors, along with some of the more recently hired faculty, toured the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratories in Fee Hall on Friday, April 18.
Professor Teik C. Lim of the University of Cincinnati gave a seminar Tuesday, April 22, on the modeling, analysis and control of high-speed gear dynamics.
The MSU Formula Racing Team and the Baja Racing Team took part in Woodcreek Elementary's Career Day in Lansing on April 16.
The Michigan State University Board of Trustees recognized 22 students, including Bryan E. Wagenknecht of mechanical engineering, for their academic achievements.
Professor Robert D. Tzou of the University of Missouri gave a seminar Tuesday, April 15, on thermal lagging in multi-carrier systems.
At the end of each semester, the College of Engineering at Michigan State University holds its Design Days, allowing pre-college students to interact with college students studying engineering.
The MSU Formula Racing Team has begun a new Race for a Cause program in support of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan. Car 51's team is currently collecting per-lap pledges for every lap the car completes around the endurance course at the Michigan International Speedway and Auto Club Speedway in the upcoming months. One hundred percent of all pledges donated will go directly to the Foundation. The team is hoping to grant at least one wish, usually costing around $5,000. For more information, please visit the Formula Team's website.
The Michigan State University Solar Car team has been hard at work trying to finish designing and building their solar car, Brasi-dius, in time for the North American Solar Challenge in July. The Challenge is a 10-day, 2,400-mile race from Dallas to Calgary, Alberta. In 2001, the team registered to compete in the race but had to withdrawal themselves after finding that the frame they had built was defective. With Dr. Norbert Mueller as the group's advisor, the 20 active members work in the expanding field of environmentally friendly energy. Bringing Brasi-dius to the race will be a great accomplishment for a team who has yet to build a working solar car.
Four members of the Mechanical Engineering Department presented papers at the North Central Section of the American Society for Engineering Education on Saturday, March 29. Dr. Craig Somerton, Andrew Siefert, Marco Vagani, and Craig Gunn made up ten percent of the papers delivered at the conference in Dayton.
Dr. Eckart Meiburg of the University of California at Santa Barbara gave a seminar Tuesday, April 8, on computational investigations of gravity and turbidity currents. He presented an overview of high-resolution, Navier-Stokes based on simulations of gravity and turbidity currents, focusing primarily on the standard lock-exchange configuration. The turbidity currents measured were driven by particles having negligible inertia and being much smaller than the smallest length scales of the buoyancy-induced fluid motion. Meiburg also discussed the differences between two- and three-dimensional gravity current dynamics; analyzed effects caused by stratification of the ambient; and showed some of the first results regarding the unsteady interaction of a gravity current with a submarine structure, such as a pipeline. The seminar was hosted by Dr. Steven Shaw.
Mechanical Engineering encompasses many areas, including Controls, Vibrations, Heat Transfer, Fluid Dynamics, Combustion, and Design.
The department's ASME design team set the standard for excellence in winning the ASME District B championship at the ASME Student Professional Development Conference held in Pittsburgh, April 4-6.
The Formula Racing Team attended the Race for Reading, Tuesday, April 1, at Bennett Woods Elementary School in Okemos, Michigan. The program was put together by the teachers to encourage students and their families to read during the month of March. Each child kept a log of their recorded reading hours in hopes to achieve the set goal of 12,000 total hours. The final count was announced at the concluding ceremony, adding up to just over 13,000 hours!
Anoosheh Niavarani, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, has been selected as the recipient of the Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship.
Dr. Somerton and 15 ASME Student Officers will be traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to attend the 2008 ASME Student Professional Development Conference this weekend, April 4-6. The weekend schedule of events will consist of learning, fun, competition, and networking.
The Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) is seeking an Academic Specialist with responsibility for teaching undergraduate courses from our bachelor's degree program. The expected teaching load will consist of three courses per semester with instructional responsibilities beginning in the Fall of 2008.
Dr. Giles J. Brereton received the 2008 Withrow Teaching Excellence Award at the Eighteenth Annual Engineering Awards Luncheon held at the University Club on Thursday, March 27. Each year, each department in the College of Engineering selects one faculty member to receive the award based primarily on nominations from students. The criteria includes the command of course content, delivery of course materials, creation of an effective learning environment, availability to students, guidance of student organizations and projects, ability to elicit enthusiastic learning, and effective advising and mentoring.
The 2007-08 Ambassadors and the recipients of the Undergraduate Service Awards were announced at the College of Engineering Academic Awards and Service Recognition Reception held at the University Club on Tuesday, March 25.
Shahram Pouya, a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, was recognized in receiving the Outstanding Graduate Award at the College of Engineering Academic Awards and Service Recognition Reception on Tuesday, March 25, at the University Club.
The College of Engineering Academic Awards and Service Recognition was held on Tuesday, March 25, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering is proud to recognize their 2008 award recipients. The Undergraduate Academic Awards recognize the top three percent of juniors and seniors with cumulative grade point averages of 3.5 or above and sophomores in the top one percent of their class. The recipients include Nathan Paul Geib, Jeffrey William Laforge, Benjamin Thomas Llewellyn, Justin Torre Meeder, Sara Elizabeth Murawa, Adam Jon Sneller, Christopher Ryan Sweeney, Eric John Tingwall, Bryan Ellis Wagenknecht, and Matthew John Weir.
Professor G. Ravichandran of the California Institute of Technology gave a seminar Tuesday, March 25, on the quantitative characterization of 3-D deformations of cell interactions with soft biomaterials. He explained how interactions between biochemical processes and mechanical signaling during cell migration, spreading and adhesion play important roles in cellular behavior. In order to investigate this behavior three-dimensional measurement techniques are needed to stimulate in vivo conditions. One technique Ravichandran used was a 3-D full-field measurement technique which measures large deformations in soft materials through laser fluorescence confocal microscopy. His results provided new insights on force fields generated by cells and the role of the mechanical properties of the substrate. The seminar was hosted by Dr. Baek and Dr. Pourboghrat.
Eann Patterson, Chairperson of Mechanical Engineering, and Maurice Whelan of the European Commission DG Joint Research Centre, came up with a way to detect nanoparticles using a conventional optical microscope. While taking images of cells the two noticed the high-resolution images were interrupted with caustics--bright envelopes of light surrounding a dark center. The nanoparticles are much smaller than the microscope's normal resolution but the light interacting with the particles produced images many times larger than the structures themselves. Researchers in the U.S. and Italy are now using this technique to precisely capture the nanoscale. The procedure seems to have many advantages over traditional fluorescent labeling of particles with Patterson and Whelan's work suggesting the caustics can produce magnifications between one hundred and one thousand times the particle sizes.
Professor William S. Saric of Texas A&M University gave a seminar on Tuesday, March 11, on flight experiments on laminar flow control in swept-wing boundary layers. He explained how data are presented on boundary-layer transition to turbulence in low-disturbance flight environments with measurements including infra-red thermography and hotfilm anemometry.