Dr. James V. Beck Professor of Mechanical Engineering Phone: (517)355-8487 Fax: (517)353-1750 Email: beck@egr.msu.edu Address: 2452, Engineering Building, MSU, E. Lansing, MI-48824

• Dr. Beck does research in the area of inverse problems in heat transfer.
• One part relates to determining surface heat flux and heat transfer coefficients from transient temperature histories inside solids. This has had extensive application to quenching, heat transfer around brakes and clutches, and electronic components. Another research component is the determination of thermal properties of solids, particularly under transient and complex situations.
• This also has application to determining thermal contact conductances in engines, brakes, and electronic devices.

Resources

• Heat Transfer Property Measurement and Parameter Estimation Laboratory: Several computers including a 100 Mz Pentium, Sun workstation and 486/33 for data acquisition with National Instruments data acquisition boards; Carver Laboratory Pressure Instrument which can provide pressure and temperature conditions while the specimen is in a vacuum, 1000 C furnace, Leeds and Northrup calibration furnace and precision thermocouple welder.

• Comparison of some inverse heat conduction methods using experimental data J.V. Beck, B. Blackwell and A. Haji-Sheikh, Int. J. of Heat Mass Transfer, pp. 3649-3658, Volume 39, No. 17, 1996.
  
• Estimation of directional-dependent thermal properties in a carbon-carbon composite K, J. Dowding and J.V. Beck, Int. J. of Heat Mass Transfer, pp. 3157-3164, Volume 39, No. 15, 1996.
  
• Optimal Experimental Design for Estimating Thermal Properties of Composite Materials R. Taktak, J.V. Beck and E. Scott, Int. J. of Heat Mass Transfer, 1993.
  
• Heat Conduction using Green's Functions J.V. Beck, K. D. Cole, A. Haji-Sheikh and B. Litkouhi, Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, Philadelphia, 1992
  
• Analysis of quenching and Heat Treating Processes Using Inverse Heat Conduction Method J.V. Beck and A.M. Osman, in the proceedings of the International Conference on Quenching, 9/1992.
  
• Inverse Heat Conduction: Ill-posed Problems J.V. Beck, B. Blackwell, C.R. St. Clair, Jr., New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1985.
  

• Inverse Problem Solutions for Selected Composite Materials
  Sponsor: Sandia National Laboratories, 8/92-9/93
  
• Development of a User-friendly Three-dimensional Transient Heat Conduction Program and Measurement of Temperature Fields of Electronic Components using Infrared Thermography
  Sponsor: Teledyne Solid State Division, 12/92-12/93


• Multidimensional Thermal and Sensing Properties of High Temperature Structures consisting of Composites and CVD Diamond Films
  Sponsor: Composites Structures and Materials Center
  

• Director, Heat Transfer Property Measurement and Parameter Estimation, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
  
• Dr. Beck was the originator of the Inverse Problems in Engineering seminar in 1988; meetings held each year with continual growth
  
• Co-organizer of the Joint American-Russian Workshop on Inverse Problems in Heat Transfer, held at MSU in 1992