FLUID MECHANICS AND DYNAMICS

TOPIC 1 ******************
SIMULATION OF FLUID FLOW IN MICROCHANNELS FOR DESIGN OF MICRO COOLING DEVICE

Supervisor: Victoria Timchenko

Since the current generation of electronic chips presents a significant challenge in developing adequate cooling procedures with heat sinks, it has been suggested to use direct cooling of chip using flowing water in micro-channels. However as the flow regime in micro channels is invariably laminar, the heat transfer rate is much lower in comparison with turbulent flow and needs to be enhanced to dissipate the necessary large amount of heat. We have found that the use of oscillating jets can significantly increase the rate of heat transfer in micro-channel but more data on the fluid mechanics are required to design proper micro cooling devices. The student will study numerically the interaction between two micro jets and the main flow in a micro channel using a commercial finite-volume package, ANSYS CFX-11. He/She will be actively involved in a research project currently undertaken by an academic staff member and Master student.

Contact: Dr. Victoria Timchenko, Room 109A, E-mail: v.timchenko@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4148

TOPIC 2 ******************
DEVELOPMENT OF A COLOUR SCHLIEREN SYSTEM FOR SUPERSONIC FLOW VISUALIZATION

Supervisor: Tracie Barber

Schlieren is an experimental method that allows supersonic flows to be visualised, using the gradients of density found in such flow fields. We currently have a system in the School, which allows greyscale imaging to be developed; a colour system would allow better resolution of the flow features. This new technique would be used on projects relating to supersonic ground effect (e.g. land speed record cars) and high speed engine injection systems and you would be assisting researchers working in these areas. The project will involve experimental development, use of the supersonic wind tunnel, and understanding of the relevant theory.

Contact: Dr. Tracie Barber, Room 112, E-mail: t.barber@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4081

TOPIC 4 ******************
BUOYANCY-INDUCED AIR FLOW IN DOUBLE-SKIN FACADES

Supervisor: Eddie Leonardi

A numerical study of multifunctional building facades designed to reduce energy consumption of buildings will be conducted. Of particular focus will be double-skin facades with energy combined components such as photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) systems. The most efficient use of solar energy collecting surface is targeted in terms of both electrical conversion and air heating or cooling. The modelling of this requires the most appropriate turbulence model to be used. This project will involve running different turbulence models and comparing the results with experimental data.

Contact: Prof E. Leonardi Room 109B, E-mail: E.Leonardi@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4252

TOPIC 5 ******************
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN INNOVATIVE PRACTICAL METHOD OF PRODUCING SYNTHETIC JET

Supervisor: N.A.Ahmed

Control and manipulation of flows are important aspects of modern fluid mechanical devices. In recent times synthetic jet is fast establishing itself to be a viable concept for these products. However, progress is hampered by the lack of suitable methods to produce these synthetic jets. The aim of the project is to explore whether a new and innovative approach can be employed to produce a simple but effective pump system of sufficiently small size to do the job. If successful, the project will have implications beyond those currently envisioned for the project.

Contact: A/Prof N.A.Ahmed, Room ME219, E-mail: n.ahmed@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4080

TOPIC 6 ******************
A NOVEL METHOD OF FLOW VISUALIZATION OF SUBSONIC FLOW USING SCHLIEREN SYSTEM

Supervisor: N.A.Ahmed

Flow visualisation is an important aspect of fluid flow investigation. The aim of the project is to explore whether a Schlieren system which is an experimental method that employs density gradients to allow supersonic flows to be visualised, can be used to visualise subsonic flow fields as well. A Schlieren system currently exists in the School and initial attempts suggests there is some possibility that with some innovative approach, the method could be applied in subsonic flow where density gradients are very low. If successful, the project will establish the basis of more exciting development of the complete system and open up new avenues of research of very complex flows of practical importance.

Contact: A/Prof N.A.Ahmed, Room ME219, E-mail: n.ahmed@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4080

MANUFACTURING

TOPIC 7 ******************
FABRICATION AND TESTING OF SUPERINSULATORS FOR LIQUID HEAT TRANSFER IN MICROCHANNELS

Supervisor: Gary Rosengarten

There is currently a huge international research effort in reducing the size a variety of systems down to the microscale to allow unprecedented increases in portability and efficiency. Examples include micro fuel-cells to power mobile phones and lab-on-a-chip devices as portable chemical processing plants. Most of these devices involve fluid flow and heat transfer in tiny sub-millimetre fluid channels (microchannels). Superhydrophobic surfaces (which are extremely water repellent, like Teflon for example) are known to reduce the pressure drop of liquid flow and thus reduce pumping power. Similarly, we have found that they better insulators than standard smooth surfaces (superinsulators) and thus will be able to reduce the heat loss to the environment. We have some initial experimental and computational results but more experiments are needed. The student will work with some students in the microfluidics group and a senior academic to fabricate a variety of superhydrophobic surfaces using moulds made previously, and then modify a heat exchanger test rig in order to determine the super insulating properties of such surfaces. The student will also further develop a theory, to predict the heat transfer rate using such surfaces.

Contact: Dr. Gary Rosengarten, Room 314, E-mail: g.rosengarten@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4081

TOPIC 8 ******************
MICRO-FABRICATION OF COMPLEX PART GEOMETRICAL FEATURES ON FUNCTIONAL CRYSTAL MATERIALS

Supervisor: Jun Wang

Project Outline: Functional crystal materials, such as synthetic quartz crystals, are used extensively in electronic and control systems. Because of the capability limitation of the existing processing technologies, the micro-fabrication of complex geometrical features, such as micro curved slots and other 3D geometries, on these materials has been either impossible or too costly. In addition, these technologies often cause micro-damages to the parts processed, which reduce the reliability and functionality of the parts. This project will identify a new micro-fabrication technology using a micro-jet material removal process for this application. It will involve an experimental investigation to assess the feasibility of the process and the effects of process variables on the process performance when micro-processing of a synthetic quartz crystal. Particular attention will be paid to study the stress free and damage free materials removal process and the post-process surface integrity of the material.

Contact: Dr Jun Wang, Room ME214, Tel 9385 5784, jun.wang@unsw.edu.au

DESIGN

TOPIC 9 ******************
ANALYSIS OF A COMPOSITE CONVEYOR SUPPORT

Supervisor: Dr. Carl Reidsema

The design lab is undertaking research into the design of advanced composite structures for Australian industry. One such project is investigating the use of composite materials in underground mining conveyors. The effective use of such materials in this industry requires innovative new methods of manufacturing and assembling composite structures, whilst maintaining their key advantages. Through the use of advanced analysis and solid modelling software tools such as ANSYS Workbench and CATIA V5 the project will aim to develop and analyse several innovative alternatives to traditional composite manufacturing processes. The project is an excellent opportunity to gain some experience in the design and analysis of composite structures and provide an understanding of the tools involved.

Contact: Dr. Carl Reidsema, Design Research Lab, E-mail: Reidsema@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4092

TOPIC 9a*****************
ADVANCED CAD AUTOMATION

Supervisor: Dr. Carl Reidsema

The Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures Ltd (CRC-ACS) is undertaking research into the design of advanced composite structures for Australian industry. The research includes the development of tools to support the design and analysis of structures for the new Boeing 787 aircraft and projects linked to the European aerospace industry. As part of the contribution from UNSW to the research program algorithms have been developed to recognise features exported from the solid modelling software CATIA V5. Once the solid model features have been identified, algorithms are used to translate them into simplified representations that can be analysed using Finite Element Analysis software such as MSC Nastran. This technology has the potential to significantly reduce both time and effort required to determine the performance of complex structures. The student will work in the CRC-ACS research team at UNSW that includes 7 PhD students and 2 post-doctoral research fellows in addition to academic staff. You will gain insight into the use of carbon fibre and the design and analysis of high performance structures.

CONTACT: DR. CARL REIDSEMA, DESIGN RESEARCH LAB, E-MAIL: REIDSEMA@UNSW.EDU.AU, PHONE: 9385 4092

MECHATRONICS AND ROBOTICS

TOPIC 10 ******************
IMPLEMENTAION OF NAVIGATIONAL ALGORITHMS ON AN AUTONOMOUS TRACTOR FOR PRECISION GUIDANCE

Supervisor: Jayantha Katupitiya

The purpose of this project is to make an unmanned tractor follow a specified path with less than 2 cm positional error and less than one-degree angular error, while travelling at speeds of 10-20 km/h. This is a key requirement of the new generation of unmanned agricultural machines to ensure highly structured crop plantation (such as wheat) so that autonomous farming can be achieved in the future. The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering has a John Deere tractor with automated steering and propulsion equipped with a wide range of sensors among which is a GPS system that can sense the position with less than one cm accuracy. The work includes the implementation of new control software to control steering and propulsion so that the desired path tracking accuracy can be achieved. The project is a joint effort between the Autonomous Systems Research Group of the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, the Systems Group of the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications and the Australian Defence Force Academy. You will work with three academics and three undergraduate thesis students. Your third year knowledge of computing, control systems, real-time systems and digital circuits will be valuable for the project.

Contact: Dr. Jay Katupitiya, Room M9, E-mail: j.katupitiya@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4096

TOPIC 11 ******************
DESIGN AND BUILD OF THE MKII CRAWLING ROBOT

Supervisor: Jayantha Katupitiya

A crawling robot is a machine that can move around with unconventional ‘ground’ holding methods. An example is a machine that can travel with suction cups attached to its ‘feet’. They are able to travel into crevices of structured (such as pipe lines and ducts) or unstructured environments (such as collapsed buildings), primarily for surveillance purposes and in some cases for routine inspection of otherwise inaccessible places. The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering has one such machine that looks like a miniature robot arm with six joints powered by six motors and two suction cups attached to its feet. The work includes design and build of a new crawler with increased payload capacity so that it can carry a suite of sensors such as miniature cameras and range sensors plus batteries and radio communication devices. The work will also include programming a microcontroller to act as the central motor control and communication computer of the crawling robot. The successful applicant will be working with one academic, two PhD students and one undergraduate thesis student. The knowledge gained in machine design, digital circuits and microprocessor-controlled systems will be useful for the project.

Contact: Dr. Jay Katupitiya, Room M9, E-mail: j.katupitiya@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4096

TOPIC 12 ******************
CROP TRACKING NON-HERBICIDAL WEEDER

Supervisor: Jayantha Katupitiya

Due to excessive cost and environmental damage the Australian Grains Industry is aiming to develop non-herbicidal weeders. In broad acre crops such as wheat, which are planted in straight rows, the targeted area for weeding is the inter-row space. Thus the weed destruction system, let it be a mechanical destruction system or an electrical system such as an electrocuter, must be precisely guided to the inter-row space. This cannot be carried out by a human operator with desired precision over a prolonged period of time, hence an automated machine is required. The school already has a wheeled mobile robot that is prepared for this purpose. It will carry a set of electrodes with a trailing metal wheel acting as the grounding electrode, to electrocute the weeds. The work includes selecting suitable sensors to sense the crop rows and developing tracking algorithms to be implemented in the system’s motion controller to ensure accurate targeting of the weeds. This is a collaborative project between the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and the Centre for Precision Agriculture at University of Sydney. You will be working with a number of academics and a post-doctoral researcher. The knowledge of vision and laser sensors, computing and microprocessor-controlled systems will be beneficial.

Contact: Dr. Jay Katupitiya, Room M9, E-mail: j.katupitiya@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4096

TOPIC 13 ******************
INVESTIGATION OF ROBOTIC AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS

Supervisor: Jayantha Katupitiya

Most modern agricultural implements such as those that saw seeds are passively dragged by large tractors. The tractors themselves have some degree of precision guidance and the aim is to plant the crops along desired rows. This arrangement delivers successful results only on perfectly flat land. Even then, the unbalanced forces that act on the implement drives it off-course, thereby failing to deliver the crop planting on desired locations. The alternative to this set up is the development of active implements that are capable of maintaining precision navigation despite unbalanced disturbance forces. This requires the development of implements that are equipped with their own sensors and controls. The work will include the investigation of possible methodologies to develop such implements and to design and build a laboratory model of such an implement. The successful candidate will work in a group consisting of three academics, three undergraduate students and one PhD student. This project is suitable for a student with a good Mechanical Engineering background with skills in machine design and analysis.

Contact: Dr. Jay Katupitiya, Room M9, E-mail: j.katupitiya@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 4096

TOPIC 14 ******************
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A ROTOR-WING MAV FOR URBAN SEARCH-AND-RESCUE

Supervisor: Tomonari Furukawa

1st US-Asian Demonstration and Assessment of Micro Air and Ground Vehicle Technology is an international competition which will be held in March, 2008, as an micro air vehicle version of DARPA Challenge, and UNSW is planning to send a team in collaboration with University of Sydney. One of the requirements to participate in this competition is the use of a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) which does not have any dimension more than 30 cm. Commercially available MAVs do not satisfy this requirement, so it is essential to develop a new MAV or modify a commercially available MAV. This project is aimed at developing a rotor-wing MAV which can fly stably under some wind in an outdoor environment and fly flexibly in a narrow indoor environment.

A prototype of the MAV has been developed. Work in this project includes the completion of the MAV with other members of the team. Work also includes the fine-tuning of the control algorithms such that the MAV can be controlled stably under unexpected disturbances such as wind and dust.

Contact: Dr. Tomonari Furukawa, Room M7, E-mail: t.furukawa@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 6091

TOPIC 15 ******************
DESIGN OF A FLYING INSECT ROBOT FOR URBAN SEARCH-AND-RESCUE

Supervisor: Tomonari Furukawa

Consider an earthquake scenario where citizens are held inside a collapsed building without an exit large enough for them to escape. Humans can be too dangerous or too large to work in such an environment, and ground robots cannot run if the ground surface is disordered. Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) such as a flying insect robot is an effective and may be the only autonomous robot that enables the search for the citizens. In this project, the student will develop a flying insect robot that carries a small camera for the search mission.

Contact: Dr. Tomonari Furukawa, Room M7, E-mail: t.furukawa@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 6091

TOPIC 16 ******************
DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTONOMOUS BLIMP FOR BUILDING SURVEILLANCE

Supervisor: Tomonari Furukawa

Equipping night vision sensors to all the corridors or hiring human guards for night building surveillance is an indispensable but expensive investment for building owners. An alternative and cost-effective option would be to develop an autonomous blimp with a night vision sensor. As aerial vehicles that can be driven quietly, blimps are well suited to the night surveillance. In this project, the student will develop an autonomous indoor blimp with sensors that localize the blimp and understand the environment.

Contact: Dr. Tomonari Furukawa, Room M7, E-mail: t.furukawa@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 6091

TOPIC 17 ******************
DEVELOPMENT OF COOPERATIVE AUTONOMOUS HELICOPTERS

Supervisor: Tomonari Furukawa

Consider a possible marine disaster scenario where a ship is sinking in a storm and the crew and passengers on the ship need to be rescued before survival expectancy vanishes. The only action that the crew and passengers can take is to get on life rafts and wait, being drifted by strong winds and high waves of the storm, until a rescue team arrives. The primary goal of search-and-rescue (SAR) in such a scenario is to search for and find the life rafts as quickly and efficiently as possible. Cooperative SAR by a number of aerial vehicles has recently received considerable attention accordingly.

The supervisor and 10 postgraduate students are currently developing four autonomous model helicopters as test beds for cooperative SAR. The student will join the team and be involved in the development and flight tests. One of the possible topics in the project is the development of an autopilot consisting of accelerometers, gyros and GPS, but, since there are many topics involved, the student will discuss with the supervisor to find the most suitable and interesting topic.

Contact: Dr. Tomonari Furukawa, Room M7, E-mail: t.furukawa@unsw.edu.au, Phone: 9385 6091

[Top of Page]

THERMAL AND FLUIDS ENGINEERING

TOPIC 18 ******************
TUNEABLE SUPERHYDROPHOBIC SURFACES USING ELECTROWETTING

Supervisor(s): Gary Rosengarten

There is currently a huge international research effort in reducing the size a variety of systems down to the microscale to allow unprecedented increases in portability and efficiency. Examples include micro fuel-cells to power mobile phones and lab-on-a-chip devices as portable chemical processing plants. Most of these devices involve fluid flow and heat transfer in tiny sub-millimetre fluid channels (microchannels). Superhydrophobic surfaces (which are extremely water repellent, like Teflon for example) are known to reduce the pressure drop of liquid flow and thus reduce pumping power. Similarly, we have found that they better insulators than standard smooth surfaces (superinsulators) and thus will be able to reduce the heat loss to the environment. Electrowetting, the phenomena of changing interfacial energy of an interface, has been demonstrated to be an excellent actuation and pumping mechanism for microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip applications. In effect electrowetting can change a surface from being superhydrophobic to hydrophilic meaning that pressure drop and heat transfer rate can be controlled in a channel. Thus the aim of this project is to design, fabricate and test a microfluidic channel where the wettability can be controlled and tuned using electrowetting. This has applications in a variety of lab-on-a-chip processes from chemical processing to DNA amplification.

Contact:
Dr Gary Rosengarten
Senior Lecturer
Thermofluids and Microfluidics
School of Mechanical Engineering
University of New South Wales
Sydney, 2052, Australia
Ph: +61 2 9385 4112
Fax: +61 2 9663 1222
email: g.rosengarten@unsw.edu.au

[Top of Page]

Naval Architecture

TOPIC 19 ******************
Free-wheeling vs Locked Propellers

Supervisor: Mr P.J. Helmore ME106 9385 5215 p.helmore@unsw.edu.au

Brief Summary: Is it better to let a yacht propeller free wheel, or to lock it, when sailing? The anecdotal evidence appears to be about evenly divided (see article in the August 2006 issue of The Australian Naval Architect).

A project is therefore proposed to investigate the phenomenon on two fronts: a detailed literature search, and using the four-quadrant data for the MARIN B-Series propellers to see if this can shed any light on the subject.

This project has the possibility of extension into CFD calculations.

Contact: Mr P.J. Helmore , ME106 9385 5215 p.helmore@unsw.edu.au

[Top of Page]