Ongoing Projects

University of Hawaii Human Powered Vehicle

If you would like more information about the University of Hawaii 2003 HPV, click here.

CubeSat

This year a few mechanical engineering students are involved in the University of Hawaii's CubeSat Project. We are currently doing the thermal modeling of the satellite, the structure analysis, as well as involved with the systems integration and testing.

Research awards for the department exceeded $650,000/faculty/year in the last 3 years, with total awards for the Hawaii Corrosion Lab exceeding more than $3,500,000 in the same period. Other large research grants were awarded to the Composite Materials Lab and to the Underwater Vehicle and Flame Design initiatives. During the few past year, the ME department has increased its long-term foundation assets to $300,000 a result of a charitable remainder trust plan with the UH Foundation. The department is responsible for more than 2/3 of the research expenditures and overhead returns to the College of Engineering. Areas of active research include, but are not limited to Robotics, Underwater Vehicle Design and Technology, Dynamical Systems, Corrosion, Intelligent and Composite Materials, Advanced Manufacturing, Combustion, Multiphase Flows, Heat and Mass Transfer, Perturbation Methods, Applied Mathematics, and Computational Fluid Dynamics. The MME research has been published in the best journals and most prestigious conferences of the respective fields. Journals where the most recent publications of the ME department appeared include the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, International Journal of Adaptive Control, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Advances in Robotics, AIAA Journal, Combustion and Flame, Combustion Science and Technology, Journal of Composite Materials, Composite Science and Technology, Bioengineering and Biotechnology, etc.

Recent projects in our department have been sponsored by NASA, NSF, ONR, AOR, DARPA, American Chemical Society, Petroleum Research Fund, U.S. Department of Commerce, Intel, SamSung, EG&G, MetroLaser Inc., Silicon Graphics, StereoGraphics, Tektronix, Wavefront Technologies, Sense8, RSI Research, Allied-Signal Inc., University of Hawaii Research Council, etc.

The MME Faculty members conduct research categorized under the department's three primary areas:

Fluid and Thermal Sciences
Applied math and perturbation methods in heat and mass transfer, solidification, thermodynamics, combustion, fluid dynamics, multiphase flows, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)..

Mechanics and Design
Robotics, mechatronics, acoustics, dynamics, control, machine vision, microelectromechanical systems, rehabilitation engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical design.

Materials and Manufacturing
Mechanical behavior, manufacturing, and processing of advanced materials; composite, marine, intelligent, and superconducting materials; solid-state ionics, electrochemistry, and corrosion.

Research projects are conducted using state-of-the-art facilities within the department's research laboratories: Autonomous Systems, Advanced Materials Manufacturing, Corrosion, Electrochemistry, Electron Microscopy, Intelligent and Composite Materials, Multiphase Flow, Robotics, etc.

The following provides a brief summary of the faculty's research activities:

B. H. Chao, PhD

Theoretical investigation on chemically reactive flows: various combustion phenomena such as flame propagation, ignition, extinction, stability and flammability under the effects of flow non-uniformity, conductive and radiative heat loss, preferential diffusion, product dissociation, and natural convection are studied using appropriate mathematical and numerical methods.

Combustion in porous media: combustion and heat transfer in inert porous bed and the smoldering combustion in chemically reactive porous materials are investigated under various flow conditions.

Combustion synthesis of refractory materials: various combustion phenomena observed in the development of self-propagating, high-temperature synthesis (SHS) technique, such as the pulsating and spinning propagation of combustion wave and extinction of the combustion front, are theoretically studied to gain a better understanding on the combustion characteristics of such a technique.

M. N. Ghasemi Nejhad, PhD

Analytical/computational and experimental techniques in design, manufacturing, and characterization of advanced materials such as composite materials, intelligent materials, thin films, microelectromechanical systems, with applications in mechanics, thermomechanics, structural dynamics, and crashworthiness.

L. H. Hihara, PhD
Corrosion behavior of metal-matrix composites (MMCs) such as SiC/Mg, Sic/Ti, and Si/Al are studied in aqueous and atmospheric environments. Ceramic fibers or particles that are used to reinforce MMCs may have significant effects on corrosion behavior. Thin ceramic films such as silicon nitride and silicon-carbon are being developed and studied for corrosion barriers on metal substrates. Other interests are thermogalvanic corrosion of copper, and the scanning-vibrating electrode technique for localized corrosion and modeling.

K. M. Htun, PhD
Mechanical properties of materials, especially corrosion, wear, fatigue, and fracture of materials used in structural applications. Failure models and mechanisms related to those properties, as well as manufacturing techniques used to make the desired sizes and shapes. Manufacturing technologies to help joint venture activities in developing countries

R. H. Knapp, PhD

solid mechanics and design
ocean structures, shells, undersea cables, ropes, and flexible pipe
development of cable modeling software
rehabilitation engineering

B. E. Liebert, PhD

Applications of solid-state ionic materials for use in energy conversion, batteries and fuel cells, sensors, hydrides, and electrochromics. Environmental degradation and failure analysis of engineering materials. Computer applications in the laboratory.

J. Yuh, PhD

Underwater robotics, control of elastic and rigid multibody systems, virtual reality, and adaptive and neural-net control systems.