Mechanical Engineering

Research News and Projects

Letter from the Chair

he Department of Mechanical Engineering has evolved substantially over the two years since the last Newsletter was published. Our research programs have grown, and our academic programs are flourishing. Our faculty continue to receive accolades from the scientific and professional communities. Two exciting young faculty members have joined us: Allison Okamura in the area of robotics and Jean-Franois Molinari in computational mechanics. This brings our faculty size to fifteen, and we have plans for three more hires in the near future. The most notable development, however, is a recent reorganization that we have undertaken as part of a process I call Reconstructing Mechanical Engineering. As a result, we now characterize the research activities of the Department in terms of the following areas: Microscale/nanoscale science and engineering Computational engineering Aerospace and marine systems Robotics and human-machine interaction Energy and the environment Mechanical engineering in biology and medicine

This reconstruction effectively moves us away from the traditional compartmentalization in terms of discipline, and focuses instead on the cutting-edge research that we do. Associated with this reconstruction is a re-organization of the options afforded to our undergraduates, and the development of several targeted Masters programs that focus in some of these areas. Managing these changes will take us some time, and I expect to report to you on our progress in succeeding issues of this Newsletter. In the past, the Department has published two distinct documents: a Newsletter for our alumni and friends, and a Brochure for potential students and visitors. This publication replaces both of the previous documents, and is intended to serve a larger audience, including our alumni, potential and current students, visitors and peers. By nature, therefore, we can include here only a sampling of the many exciting things that happen in the Department. A much more detailed picture of the Department can be obtained from our web site, www.me.jhu.edu, which includes links to each of the research laboratories, the academic programs, and lists undergraduate and graduate students, and alumni. The Department has always benefited from the goodwill of its alumni and friends, and I hope that you will continue to support our students and academic programs. As always, all contributions are valuable, large or small, and whether financial or through direct action on behalf of the students and faculty. A selection of specific ways in which you can contribute to our development is included in this document (see p. 29). I encourage you to visit us at Homewood if you are in the area. Please feel free to call us at 410-516-6451, or to send us email, or simply to drop by. There is very little that the faculty and students enjoy more than showing off the wonderful things that they work on every day, and I expect that you will enjoy feeling the pounding pulse of one of the leading engineering departments in this great research university. With best wishes,

K.T. Ramesh September 2001

Table of Contents
Contact Information
Department of Mechanical Engineering Latrobe Hall 3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218-2681 Phone: 410.516.7132 Fax: 410.516.4316 Web: www.me.jhu.edu

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering Computational Engineering Aerospace and Marine Systems Robotics and Human-Machine Interaction Energy and the Environment Mechanical Engineering in Biology and Medicine Senior Design Projects Awards and honors Endowment Naming Opportunities Society of Scholars

4 10 14 17 20 23 26 29 29 30
Questions or concerns regarding Title VI, Title IX and Section 504 should be referred to the Director of Affirmative Action Programs, 205 Garland Hall, 410.516.8075. AAO 10/00 (102.1) The Johns Hopkins University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, veteran status or marital status in any student program or activity administered by the university or with regard to admission or employment. Defense Department discrimination in ROTC programs on the basis of sexual orientation conflicts with this university policy. The university continues its ROTC program, but encourages a change in the Defense Department policy.

Writing/Editing: Mary Parlange Faculty Coordinator: Charles Meneveau

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

Think Small
watching defects form and spread in single crystals of a material. Atoms in a material line up in a particular way, into grains that form a crystalline structure. By altering the processing parameters slightly, it is possible to tune the underlining structure to optimize the mechanical properties of the material, such as its strength. Strength is governed by how defects spread, both within a grain and from one grain to the next throughout the sample. The smaller the grains within a structure, the more boundaries there are to stop a dislocation from spreading, and thus the stronger the material. In a related project, Prof. Hemker and PhD student John Balk have employed Transmission Electron Microscopy, or TEM, to characterize the atomic structure of defects in a sample of single-crystal gold, about 10 nm thick (25-30 atoms high). They found that the defects always spread on a specific plane, about 6 atoms wide, and showed that defects in iridium have the same atomic structure as in gold. This similarity was predicted by colleagues at Northwestern University, and the TEM observations are now being used as benchmarks for more detailed calculations. When hes not peering at TEM images of atoms, Prof. Hemker is testing microsamples of materials from other laboratories. The samples, which look like fleasize dog bones, are destined for use in a variety of MEMS applications, and benchmarks for their mechanical properties are needed for proper design of MEMS devices. With special tools, he stretches and examines the samples, discovering when they behave elastically (i.e., whether they return to normal after stretching), deform, or break. Tensile tests on materials used in MEMS technology are not commonplace; in fact the JHU facility is the only place in the United States that conducts tensile tests on MEMS materials. Professor William Sharpe laid the foundations for this strain testing measurement method back when he was working as a gradu-

E
Kevin J. Hemker
Professor Joint Appointment, Materials Science and Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow cole Polytechnique Fderale de Lausanne, Switzerland 199093 Ph.D. Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 1990 M.S. Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 1987 B.S. Metallurgical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 1985 Research Interests: Microstructural characterization, using advanced electron microscopy techniques and computer generated image simulations

nter the world of Professors Kevin Hemker and William Sharpe, and you step into an incredible shrinking universe. Imagine a sensor so small that it could be placed on the end of a catheter to measure blood pressure intravenously. Inside the doors of a new car, tiny accelerometers stand ready to deploy the side airbags in a crash. These and other similar devices, known as MicroElectroMechanical Systems, or MEMS, consist of tiny mechanical systems, often bundled together with electronic processing circuitry, all on a silicon chip the size of your fingernail or smaller. Driven by the possibility of exciting commercial applications and encouraged by a manufacturing technology already in place thanks to the prevalence of microchips, scientists have unleashed a virtual flood of MEMS research in the past decade. As a result, nanotechnology is quickly moving from the realm of science fiction into everyday life. Mini-robots, mini-tweezers, mini-gyroscopes, and any number of millimeter-size devices may soon be manufactured at very low cost and employed in many aspects of our lives. To imagine things this small, relative scales helpthe trip from 10 m to the atomic scale (nanometers) spans the same orders of magnitude as going from 10 m to the solar system scale. A micrometer is about 100 times smaller than the width of a hair. Tiny pieces of a material at the microscale behave very differently than large hunks of the same stuff at the macroscale. Gravity, weight, and inertial forces are overshadowed by frictional forces, surface tension, and electrostatics. Understanding the mechanical properties of materials at this tiny scale and predicting the materials behavior are fundamental to improving MEMS technology. Professor Kevin Hemker explores how individual grains of a material will behave under various conditions, testing microsamples for strength and other mechanical properties, and

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

moacoustic refrigeration. ate student at Hopkins in the 1960s. He spent A thermoacoustic refrigerator uses sound the last 35 years perfecting the technique, energy to transport thermal energy. Using a coming full circle in the process, back to Hopkins, where he has been a member of the sound source such as a loudspeaker, a standing ME faculty since 1983, and chaired the departwave is set up in a tube filled with noble gas. ment from 1983 to 1988 and from 1991 to As the wave travels back and forth in the 1997. chamber, the gas compresses (heating up) and Some of the materials sent by MEMS manexpands (cooling off). The gas also oscillates in ufacturers have seen use in microelectronics, the chamber. To exploit this energy, a therbut their mechanical properties have never moacoustic core, consisting of a densely been considered. Polysilicon, for example, is a packed stack of plates, is placed in the chamceramic widely used in integrated circuits as an ber. As the gas oscillates, it compresses and electrical material, but in MEMS technology it heats up, transferring heat to the plates. Then, is often used strucas the gas expands The most thermodynamically efficient device will and cools down, it turally. Its strength and other mechani- minimize the work going in and maximize the absorbs heat from cal properties there- useful effect, the coolingthis is a system with the the plates. This sets fore become the crit- most energy conversion. On the other hand, a up a temperature ical factors. Prof. device that provides maximum cooling will be one gradient within the Sharpe uses an plates, effectively that removes the most heat. Interferometric pumping heat from Strain Displacement gauge to assess the the cool side to the hot side of the core. Attach strength, modulus of elasticity, and Poissons heat exchangers to the thermoacoustic core, ratio of the material. In this technique, each and this device becomes a useful refrigerator. specimen, about a micron thick and 50 Fluid cooled with the thermoacoustic refrigeramicrons wide, is marked in the middle with tor can cycle over microelectronic components, two tiny gold lines. The tester then shines a absorbing their heat, and then return to the laser beam across the sample, and the beam is heat exchanger to cool down and repeat the diffracted by the lines, setting up an interfercycle. Prof. Herman and former graduate stuence pattern. As the material is stretched, the dent Martin Wetzel (currently with BMW lines move relative to one another, and this Research in Munich, Germany) are well-known change is picked up in the interference pattern. for their groundbreaking experimental and This technique can detect changes as small as theoretical work in thermoacoustic refrigeraone or two nanometers. The way a material tion. The Heat Transfer Lab in the basement of deforms under a given strain reveals its Latrobe Hall houses a working thermoacoustic mechanical properties. Their strain measuredevice, and Prof. Herman and her students ments of polysilicon and silicone nitride, both study the heat transfer using a variety of techwidely used in MEMS technology, were an niques, including holographic interferometry essential contribution to the acceptance of a and digital image processing. standard value for the modulus of elasticity of Building an efficient device that can tackle these materials. a specific cooling load involves applying theory carefully to the scale of the problem at hand. Micro-cool The cooling that a MEMS-scale thermoacoustic refrigerator can do is a problem involving n the ever-shrinking land of MEMS, heat many parameters, such as the thermal propercan be a problem. As these devices shrink in ties of the fluid being used for the cooling, the size, power per unit volume increases, and material of the plates in the stack, the length components get hot. Blowing cool air over of the stack, and the length of the tube. them is not very effective because the heat Optimization of the system involves combincapacity of air does not provide enough cooling ing groups of these parameters with a specific for these tiny areas. A possible solution is to outcome in mind. Interestingly, Prof. Herman cycle fluid cooled via a MEMS-scale thermoafound that sets of parameters leading to two coustic refrigerator around a device, according seemingly similar outcomesmaximum effito Professor Cila Herman, an expert in therciency and maximum coolingwere not the

William N. Sharpe Jr.

Alonzo G. Decker Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. Mechanics, The Johns Hopkins University, 1966 M.S. Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 1961 B.S. Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 1960 Research Interests: Experimental solid mechanics, emphasizing microsample testing and strain measurements at notch roots

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

Professor Andrea Prosperetti has done the engineering equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hatby designing a pump with no moving parts.
same. In addition, she, former graduate student Martin Wetzel, and post-doctoral researcher Zdenek Travnicek found a novel way to collapse the number of parameters needed to perform the optimization, streamlining the approach significantly. Instead of 20 parameters, she now works with a manageable six. Finding the optimal set of design parameters for a MEMS-scale thermoacoustic refrigerator is therefore much more straighforward, and Prof. Herman predicts that commercially viable models wont be far behind. atmosphere costs around $10,000, and every drop of water in space will have to be recycled. If the plants are grown hydroponically with a legion of bubble pumps circulating the water through their root zone, nutrients could be delivered in an ultra-efficient manner with minimal water inventory. Or, imagine a drugdelivery system that could be implanted under the skin and deliver medication (such as insulin) on demand via a pulse-driven bubble pump. Or perhaps a bubble pump could be activated automatically with a sensor that would monitor the insulin level in the blood. The use of an ultrasonic fieldwhich propagates harmlessly through living tissuemight make it possible to power such devices remotely with no need to undergo periodic operations to replace implanted batteries, as for example is currently the case with pacemakers.

Bubble Pumps

rofessor Andrea Prosperetti has done the engineering equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hatby designing a pump with no moving parts. These pumps are not likely to take over municipal water delivery, however, because they are about the same size as a human hair. Prof. Prosperettis pump consists of a channel about 100 to 200 microns in diameter and several hundred microns long, connecting two reservoirs of liquid. Within the channel a single vapor bubble expands and then collapses in response to a pulse of current. In the process, liquid is displaced, moving from one reservoir to the other. The entire cycle is completed in a few milliseconds and can be repeated hundreds of times a second. This simple device is surprisingly powerful; flow rates of hundreds of microliters per minute and pressure heads of several tenths of atmospheres are easily achieved. Another way to power these bubble pumps is by means of a sound wave, which causes areas of relative low and high pressure to form. A bubble will change in volume, or oscillate, in response to these pressure changes. When the bubble vibrates like this, the fluid in the channel moves. Prof. Prosperetti and his team are modeling these kinds of bubble behaviors, as well as experimenting with bubble pumps in the laboratory. Practical applications have started to materialize, and many more appear possible. For example: In the interest of eventually putting humans in space, NASA might have a good use for bubble pumpsgrowing food. If people are going to spend much time in space, says Prof. Prosperetti, they will need to eat their spinach, and it will have to be grown in space. Every pound that exits the Earths

Designer Materials

ack in the Middle Ages (and even earlier in China), weapons and tools were made of iron; either wrought iron, which was fairly soft and wouldnt hold an edge for long, or cast iron, which was extremely hard, unable to deform, and would break quite easily. Introducing a precise amount of carbon in the smelting process produced steel, which combined the useful qualities of wrought and cast iron, making it infinitely more useful and much more valuable. Materials science has come a long way since the Middle Ages, but one thing remains the sameas our technology improves we increase our demands on structural materials, subjecting them to greater loads and more severe environments. In the same way that steel was a big improvement over iron, todays metal alloys are giving way to advanced materials that can perform better under a variety of demanding conditions, from outer space to thousand-degree jet engines. Professor K.T. Ramesh is the director of JHUs new Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems (CAMCS), where faculty from Hopkins Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science departments design, fabricate, and study stateof-the-art materials for a variety of defenseand industry-related applications. An ideal material combines the best properties of metals and ceramicsthe toughness, electrical conductivity, and machinability of

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

metals, and the low density, high strength, high stiffness, and temperature resistance of ceramics. Take away some of the brittleness of ceramics and make strong metals lighter and stiffer, and the material becomes really useful. Youve got a material that is hard but wont break; one that will conduct electricity but can withstand high temperatures. These materials, known as Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) or Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) have incredible promise in many engineering applications. Demand for such materials comes from the automotive industry (lightweight and strong materials would increase fuel efficiency and last longer), electronics, telecommunications, and the aerospace and defense industries. Such advanced materials can be functionally graded to provide the exact combination of characteristics desired. Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) are materials or structures in which the material properties vary with location in such a way as to optimize some function of the overall FGM. The matrix alloy (the metal), the reinforcement material (the ceramic), the volume, shape, and location of the reinforcement, and the fabrication method can all be tailored to achieve particular desired properties. In MMCs, for example, ceramic reinforcements in the form of either fibers, whiskers, or particulates are introduced into the metal; the structure is controlled at scales varying from 100 nm to several millimeters. The design of FGMs requires an explicit understanding of the material behavior at each location and over all these length scales. However, the responses of such advanced materials to dynamic and impact loadings (severe mechanical environments) are generally unknown. Prof. Ramesh runs the Laboratory for Impact Dynamics and Rheology (LIDAR), an offshoot lab of CAMCS, in which he subjects these materials to impact loadings in an effort to understand their mechanical properties under high strain rates. With ultra-highspeed instrumentation, lasers, a dynamic temperature sensing system, and a camera capable of taking 100 million pictures per second, Prof. Ramesh can characterize dynamic fracture and failure processes in these materials. Using the results of these experiments in combination with finite-element models developed by Prof. Molinari and scanning and transmission electron microscopy techniques developed by Prof. Hemker, Prof. Ramesh hopes to be able to pinpoint how failure evolves in advanced materials. Knowing exactly how a material will behave under a certain kind of loading will allow engineers to tailor the FGM precisely to the kind of load or environment it will need to withstand in service.

Making an Impact
train rate testing is a great concept when the details of the impact, environment, or wear conditions are well-understood and can be reproduced and modeled. But often even getting that far stretches what we know. Prof. Ramesh also uses the equipment in his LIDAR laboratory to study impact dynamics the deformation, flow, and failure of materials during the very first milliseconds of an impact event. Strain rates that occur during an impact vary from as gentle as 10-5 per second to as fierce as 10+8 per second, depending on the event. A bat hitting a baseball is about 10+2 per second. A projectile hitting a tank or a bullet hitting a bulletproof vest is about 10+5 per second. An extreme event like a micro-meteorite hitting the space station, a meteorite hitting the Earth, or a nuclear explosion would be about 10+8 per second. As the impact event proceeds, the strain rate usually falls off quickly. A meteorite travels at tens of thousands of miles per hour; at the moment of impact, huge shock waves are generated that propagate away from the impact site, generating most of the damage. At the moment the shock wave arrives at your location, the strain rate is about 10+8 per second. After 10 microseconds, its decayed to 10+5 per second, and in a matter of milliseconds, were back to baseball, at 10+2 per second. Pressure during impact also varies dramatically, going as high as 1 million atmospheres in some events. Huge pressure changes like this can do all sorts of interesting things to materials. Glass is created at meteorite impacts. Liquids can turn to solids because the high pressures effectively lock the molecules in place. Cracks that might have lurked in ceramics are forced closed under high pressure, making them stronger than before. To test material behavior in the initial milliseconds of an impact event, Prof. Ramesh takes small pieces of a material and deforms them very, very quickly. From measurements taken during the test, he can predict what

as our technology improves we increase our demands on structural materials, subjecting them to greater loads and more severe environments. In the same way that steel was a big improvement over iron, todays metal alloys are giving way to advanced materials that can perform better under a variety of demanding conditions, from outer space to thousand-degree jet engines.
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Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

would happen in an actual event. If we understand extreme events well enough, he argues, perhaps we can make modifications to armoring materials or somehow alter the impact event in an effort to minimize damage. Perhaps he will find an answer to the nagging question that keeps some of us up late at night: Would it be better for us to get hit by a big meteorite, or to break the meteorite up in space and get hit by lots of little meteorites? would rather be bonded to aluminum than to itself, according to Weihs, once a reaction is started, say, with a spark or a match, a selfpropagating exothermic reaction begins and speeds through the foil at about 5m/s. The temperature goes from 25C to 1600C in about 10 milliseconds as the reaction front flashes through the foil. When sandwiched between two components and two sheets of solder and ignited, the foil melts the solder, joining the materials together. Only the surface layer of the material being joined is exposed to the heat during the process, and this is the beauty of the invention. Because the entire component is not subjected to an external heat source during bonding, the kinds of materials, solders, and brazes that are used in manufacturing processes can expand dramatically. Applications include soldering of temperaturesensitive microelectronics and semiconductors, hermetic sealing, and metal-ceramic joining. The trick is finding the right thickness and composition for a given joining application. The velocities, heats, and temperatures of the reactions can be controlled by varying the thicknesses of the alternating layers. A foil with very thin layers, about 20-50 atoms thick, will get very hot very fast, melting a lot of braze or solder and creating an extremely strong joint. But if the individual layers in the foil are too thin, oscillations in the temperature front can quench the reaction. Prof. Knio has been numerically modeling the heat transfer taking place in the exothermic reaction, in order to optimize the melting of solders while at the same time minimizing the heating of components. By combining numerical predictions with experimental measurements of mechanical properties, Prof. Knio plans to develop software that can be used to determine the combination of foils, brazes, solders, and geometries that optimizes the joint shear strength and interfacial fracture resistance. Weihs and Knio have set up a company called Reactive NanoTechnologies and are working to commercialize the reactive foil technology. The patents are rolling in. This spring, they patented a method to manufacture the foils and two foil structures.

Omar Knio
Professor Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990 S.M. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986 B.E. Mechanical Engineering, American University of Beirut, 1984 Research Interests: Computational fluid mechanics, vortex methods, turbulent reacting flows, acoustics

Foiled Again

urn off the ovens. Put away the blow torches. Save the Velcro for clothing accessories. In 1994 Dr. Tim Weihs (now a professor in JHUs Materials Science and Engineering Depart-ment) and Dr. Troy Barbee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made a groundbreaking discovery that held the promise of changing the way many materials are held together. Components that are joined by soldering or brazing in ovens or with blowtorches can be damaged by heat exposure, and the heating process also introduces oxygen, compromising the strength of the joint. Recent advances in ceramic armor materials have seen limited use because they have proven so difficult to attach to metal. Weihs and Barbees invention, a thin sheet of foil made up of nanoscale layers of alternating materials, makes it possible to create ultra-strong bonds without overheating components and without the presence of oxygen. Weihs and Barbee patented their invention in 1996, and set to the lengthy task of making these foils ready to manufacture. In this effort they are joined by Professor Omar Knio, who is spearheading the computational modeling effort that will eventually lead to optimizing the foils design. Each layer in a multilayer foil is from 1 to 100 nanometers thick, alternating between a light element such as aluminum and a transition metal such as nickel. The layers (about 1,000 of them) are deposited by magnetron sputtering to create a foil sheet about 10 microns thick (for reference, a human hair is about 60 microns in diameter). Because nickel

Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering

To improve the performance of sensors and actuators, argues Busch-Vishniac, we need to revisit the way we think about them. n the shrinking world of MEMS, devices get Traditionally, engineers study transducers by smaller, better, cheaper, and more amazing categorizing them into what they do: temperall the time. Improvements have been made in ature sensors, accelerometers, motors, pumps, materials, machining techniques, and testing and so on. She argues that it makes much more capabilities. But one important piece lags the sense to look instead at the fundamental courestthe part of the device that acts as a transpling mechanisms that link the electrical and ducer. In fact, according to Dean Ilene Buschmechanical domains, rather than at specific Vishniac, in virtually all measurement and consensors and actuators that are already in use. trol systems the sensors and actuators account She categorizes transducers by the material or for the bulk of the cost, the limitations on size, structural behavior that leads to transduction. and the majority of system failure situations. Often a single prinHer recently pubin virtually all measurement and control sys- ciple can be applied lished book, tems the sensors and actuators account for the bulk in many ways to Electromechanical Sensors and Actuators, of the cost, the limitations on size, and the major- achieve various different sensing and aims to remedy that ity of system failure situations. actuating outcomes. situation by taking a Looking at just one of those outcomes, say, novel approach to the theory and modeling of humidity sensing, limits the potential use of these devices. the same mechanism for other applications. A transducer, for the less mechanicallyBusch-Vishniac takes a systems dynamics minded, is a device that takes energy in one approach, centered around the energy in the form (mechanical, electrical, optical, magnetic, system and the parameters that can be varied chemical, or thermal) and converts it into to translate that energy into different domains. another form. A telephone has two transducers. Instead of the traditional circuit models used A microphone in the mouthpiece takes the to describe energy flow through transducers, sound energy from your voice and translates she takes a unique modeling approach known that into an electrical signal. The earpiece conas Bond Graph Modeling. These bond graph verts the electrical signal coming down the models dont assume linearity, and they are wire into a mechanical sound wave. Transducers capable of describing causal relations as well as in a clothes dryer sense when the clothes are dry conservation equations. Similarities and domiand switch the dryer off automatically. nant effects stand out, and they give a powerful Transducers are typically separated into sensors visual picture of the way a system works, withand actuators: sensors monitor something about out solving all the equations involved. Because a system, ideally without altering the system in they can show causal relations, bond graph the process, and actuators impose a state on a models identify immediately the information system. Typical actuators are motors, pumps, needed to create the system state equations and force heads. Sensors measure parameters much more accurately than typical circuit such as temperature, humidity, flow velocity, models. pressure, or acceleration. Sensors and actuators The design of transducers hasnt kept pace are often used together, as part of a measurewith the incredible advances in electronics in ment and control system. Cars are full of them. the past few decades, indicating that the curIn a passenger side airbag, for example, there is rent approach is limited and needs reevaluaa tiny accelerometer that is connected to a tion. The demand for automated sensing deployment mechanism for the airbag. If the devices, and the increasing importance of elecacceleration exceeds some threshold, then the tronic devices in our everyday lives, gives an airbag is deployed. The thermostat in the added impetus to the problem. Buschengine, the antilock brake system and keyless Vishniacs book provides a much-needed fresh door locks are all systems governed by sensors look at the issue. and actuators.

Sensors and Actuators

Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac
Professor and Dean, Whiting School of Engineering Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981 M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1978 B.S./B.A. Physics/ Mathematics, University of Rochester, 1976 Research Interests: Transduction applications in system dynamics and control techniques for sensors and actuators.

Computational Engineering
velocity) reside on discrete nodes of a lattice. During each time step, the particles move to the nearest lattice site along their direction of motion, where they collide with other partimprovements in computing power and modcles that arrive at the same site. Only a few eling sophistication over the past 1520 directions are allowed (e.g., up, down, left, years have made it possible for scientists to simright). The outcome of the collision is deterulate increasingly complex physical processes. mined by solving the kinetic (Boltzmann) This, in turn, makes it possible for engineers to equation, and a new particle distribution funcmake significant progress in design. For examtion is determined for that site. This simplified ple, computational improvements have let to molecular dynamics includes the essentials of advances in modeling of fluid flows, traditionthe underlying microscopic processes, and so ally a very important area of research at JHU. the averaged properties of LBM simulations Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software obey macroscopic continuum equations, in this is used to model the complex, turbulent flows case, the classical Navier-Stokes equations. The encountered in IC engines, HVAC systems, fire fact that equations at each lattice node can be safety applications, aircraft aerodynamics, and solved in parallel simplifies and speeds up turbomachinery. the computation significantly. And because Computational fluid dynamics is typically boundary conditions are imposed locally, latapproached in two very different ways. In the tice methods are ideal for simulating flows in classical top-down approach, the field equacomplex geometry. tions governing macroThe data set that has scopic flow phenomena are to be crunched by LBM approximated by numeriis impressively huge. cal techniques (like finiteBut instead of taking differencing or spectral the traditional approach methods) that discretize and farming the data off these continuum equations to a supercomputer, in order to solve them on a Prof. Chen has put computer. The bottomtogether a cluster of 64 up approach involves networked PCs. This solving Newtonian laws of exploits the inherently motion describing individparallel nature of the ual molecules and then LBM technique by solvworking upwards to the The figures show the time evolution of the interface for the two- ing different parts of the large scale flow, a techproblem simultaneously nique known as Molecular dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instability using the lattice Dynamics. Although this Boltzmann method developed by Professor Shiyi Chen and his on different CPUs of the cluster and then microscopic description is group. reassembling them at various stages of the simtechnically the most accurate, it strains even ulation, greatly reducing overall computing the fastest supercomputers. Models like this time. This system is used as well by Professor can only handle very small systems (10 million Joe Katz to analyze the huge amounts of data particles) and very short times (a few picoseche collects in his Particle Image Velocimetry onds). Professor Shiyi Chen, an expert in variexperiments (see Aerospace and Marine ous CFD methodologies who came to Johns Systems, page 15). Hopkins from Los Alamos National Laboratory Professor Chen has used LBM techniques to in 1999, solves various fluid flow problems solve problems ranging from the flow of oil using the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), a and water through sandstone (oil extraction), technique that occupies an intermediate to flow over and around tires and automobiles ground between typical top-down and botfor industry partners, and the complex flow tom-up methods. patterns of granular materials, such as sand or The LBM is constructed as a simplified snow. kinetic molecular system in which single-partiTurbulence is another example of an area in cle distribution functions (i.e., very coarse hiswhich increased computer power translates tograms of how often a particle has a certain

Computational Modeling of Complex Flows

Shiyi Chen
Professor Joint appointment in Mathematical Sciences Department Ph.D. Mechanics, Peking University, 1987 M.S. Mechanics, Peking University, 1984 B.S. Mechanics, Zhejiang University, 1981 Research Interests: Turbulence, computational fluid dynamics, lattice Boltzmann applications, molecular dynamics, flow in porous media.

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Computational Engineering
directly into more complex and robust models. Hopkins has a long and illustrious history of turbulence research, including the work of Professor Stanley Corrsin, who was one of the first scientists to capture the dynamics of turbulence experimentally in the wind tunnel he built for that purpose. Professors Charles Meneveau, Joe Katz, Shiyi Chen, and Omar Knio are carrying on this tradition by conducting experiments and testing theories that may eventually give us a variety of reliable ways to model turbulent flows. In 1883, British physicist Osborne Reynolds demonstrated that the transition from laminar to turbulent flow in a pipe depends on the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces in the flow, a non-dimensional number now known as the Reynolds Number. The higher the Reynolds Number, the more complex the flow, and the more difficult it is to model. Realistic turbulent flows such as those encountered in many engineering and atmospheric applications have very high Reynolds numbers, and several different approaches are taken to try and quantify what is happening in the flow. In turbulent flow, large-scale structures such as big vortices break down into smaller and smaller eddies, eventually being diffused by friction at the viscous scale. That range spans many orders of magnitude (e.g., for flow over aircraft fuselage, from tens of meters in the wake to tens of micrometers and less in the thin boundary layers). To further complicate matters, the equations governing turbulent fluid flow have a closure problemmeaning that the equations at a large scale contain unknown contributions from the smaller scales, which themselves are affected by even smaller scales, and so on. In addition, unlike smooth laminar flow, turbulent flow cannot be simplified by reducing the equations to two dimensions, since the eddies are inherently threedimensional. Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) solves the Navier-Stokes equations without averaging any of the turbulent eddies. Professor Chen uses spectral methods to discretize the equations and solves them on parallel computers. DNS is limited to low and moderate Reynolds number flows in which the ratio of viscous to large-scale eddies is manageable, but it provides very detailed, three-dimensional and time-dependent information about the fundamental structure of turbulence.

Large Eddy Simulation

ne promising top-down approach to predicting turbulent flows in a number of engineering applications simplifies the computing by separating the scales. Professor Charles Meneveau is studying this particular approach to modeling turbulence with a method known as Large Eddy Simulation (LES), in which the equations of motion are solved explicitly for all scales larger than some given threshold (the grid-scale). Motions smaller than these (the sub-grid scales) are parameterized by a set of models that depend on various simplifying assumptions about the small-scale dynamics. In contrast to other topdown modeling approaches, such as Reynolds averaging, LES does not rely on averaging all the turbulent eddies but only the smaller ones, thus making it capable of capturing much more accurately the dynamics taking place in turbulence. This method, while elegant in principle, is inherently difficult because little is actually known about the physics of the flow at the small scales. Without good experimental data to test different sub-grid-scale model possibilities, their accuracy remains questionable. Prof. Meneveau uses carefully controlled wind-tunnel experiments to test the assumptions and models that determine how the small-scale physics is represented in LES. In a recent experiment, Prof. Meneveau and postdoctoral scholar Hyung Suk Kang placed an electrically heated metal cylinder horizontally in the Corrsin Wind Tunnel. Downwind of the hot cylinder, they placed an array of probes that measured both velocity and temperature. As the turbulent eddies that formed in the wake of the cylinder became smaller and smaller, the flow lost its structure, and the velocity field became more and more random, or isotropic (about equal in all directions). But to their great interest, the statistical data they gathered indicated that the temperature field did not follow suit; rather, it retained some sense of the larger-scale spatial orientation even as it cascaded into smaller scales. This effect had not been captured correctly with the subgrid scale models, which assumed that temperature was also isotropic at the sub-grid scale. For an in-depth look at some applications of LES modeling to specific engineering problems, see Energy and the Environment, page 21 and Aerospace and Marine Systems, page 15.

In turbulent flow, large-scale structures such as big vortices break down into smaller and smaller eddies, eventually being diffused by friction at the viscous scale. That range spans many orders of magnitude (e.g., for flow over aircraft fuselage, from tens of meters in the wake to tens of micrometers and less in the thin boundary layers).
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Computational Engineering
nodes and elements, referred to as the mesh, becomes distorted. The way the mesh evolves over time tells a story of the deformation and the response of the material under scrutiny. he newest addition to the ME department, Prof. Molinari uses an adaptive mesh, which Professor Jean-Franois Molinari, is interadjusts itself when areas of significant deformaested in failure. Not failure of the personal tion occur, preventing nodes from crossing over kind, assuredly, but failure analysis of solids each other and providing finer detail in areas of that are subjected to a variety of stressful coninterest. With the ability to pinpoint and ditions. Materials subjected to tremendous selectively analyze areas that are undergoing pressure and highly repetitive activities, such relatively more change, the finite element as human knee prostheses or high-speed manuanalysis combined with adaptive meshing optifacturing tools, exhibit wear and roughening, mizes the computational resources. eventually leading to failure. Satellites confront Prof. Molinari uses this model to computamicrometeorites traveling at speeds of about tionally test different kinds of composite mate4,000 m/s, and damage is inevitable and costly. rials, conditions, and geometries in an effort to For such complex problems, in which material optimize design parameters. Coating turbine deformation is very large, no closed form anablades with an extra layer of material, for lytical solutions exist. It is often not practical example, protects them from thermal fatigue or even possible to subject an object to various and wear. The interface characteristics (such as real-world fatigue-inducing conditions in the roughness) between the laboratory. A solution substrate and the coating to this problem is layer can also be optiComputational mized to achieve better Mechanics. Prof. fatigue properties. This Molinari is an expert in kind of modeling effort is using finite-element particularly useful, since computational methby coupling mechanical, ods to study different thermal, and chemical kinds of material faileffects togethera mulure, including thermal tiphysics approach and mechanical much can be learned fatigue, large deformaFinite element Lagrangian analysis of shaped charges. The shaped about the characteristics tions, and wear. charge technology is mainly used in the oil and gas industry. and behavior of newly Ultimately, this kind designed composite materials before they are of modeling could lead to improved design used in any real applications. Likewise, those specifications for various engineering applicainterested in designing new materials and tions, by optimizing the overall structure and structures can turn to these models to deterthe composite materials used. mine what kinds of chemical and mechanical In finite element analysis, the structure to properties the material will need if it is to be modeled is subdivided into a finite set of withstand a particular environment. elements of simple shape, say, tetrahedra or cubes. The mechanical, thermal, chemical, or Multi-phase Flow other properties are then approximated at a finite number of nodes defining the elements. hen crude oil is pumped from the Upon applying boundary conditions, matheground, it enters a pipeline as a mixmatical techniques are used to solve very large ture of liquid oil and some water. As the liquid systems of equations. For dynamic problems moves along the pipeline, the pressure falls and the numerical time steps range from the order hydrocarbon gases (e.g., methane) originally of nanoseconds, for impact events, to seconds dissolved in the oil come out of solution, much or larger, for fatigue events. This means that like opening a soft drink. The fluid being the equation solving needs to be repeated a pumped then becomes a mixture of gas and large number of times, and computational effiliquid, which behaves very differently from liqciency is an important consideration. When a uid alone. This is one of the many headaches large deformation occurs, the arrangement of

Solid Mechanics and Understanding Failure

T
Jean-Franois Molinari
Assistant Professor Ph.D., Aeronautics (minor Applied Mathematics), California Institute of Technology,2001 M.S., Aeronautics, California Institute of Technology, 1997 B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Universite de Technologie de Compiegne (France), 1997 Research Interests: Computational Solid Mechanics, contact and wear, constitutive modeling, meshing techniques

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Computational Engineering
that multiphase flows (i.e., flows in which practical problems in this way is far beyond gases, liquids, and, in other cases, solids are what is feasible not only now but in the foremixed together) present to the engineer. seeable future. Hence a shortcut must be Farther down the line in the oil refinery, found, and this is a problem that has plagued another important instance of multiphase flow the field for decades. arises in the crackProfessor Andrea In practice, the amount of computational firepower Prosperetti has spent ing process, in necessary to tackle even relatively small practical the better part of the which the long chains of hydrocar- problems in this way is far beyond what is feasi- past 20 years workbons that constitute ble not only now but in the foreseeable future. ing on such crude oil are broken reduced approachdown into products such as gasoline, kerosene, es to multiphase flow, and his stature at the naptha, and household heating oil. Cracking is front of the field is a tribute to his tenacity. accomplished by mixing oil vapor with catalyst The challenge is to devise a formulation in powder at very high temperatures. Any gain in which the complex details of the actual flow the efficiency of the cracking process would (e.g., what each particle does) are lumped have a tremendous impact in terms of reduced together in an average description of the syspollution and enhanced productivity. tem. Many such approaches have been attemptOil refining is just one of many examples ed over the years, mostly with disappointing of the many ways in which multiresults. As long as the fluid conphase flows affect technology and, tains only a few particles or bubultimately, our lives. Others bles, our intuition is sufficient to include agriculture (e.g., the flow develop a satisfactory formulation, of grains in a silo), food processbut when their density increases, ing, combustion, and power genone is at a loss to capture the unexeration. pected effects that arise. Prof. In all these instances, the parProsperettis approach consists in ticles or bubbles traveling along trying to gain a physical underwith the fluid complicate fluid standing of what happens in these dynamics considerablythey situations by means of Direct exert drag on the flow, change the Numerical Simulation. He makes density of the medium, affect its the point that while, as mentioned compressibility, and introduce all before, it is impossible to simulate sorts of complex flow structures large realistic systems, much can be in their paths. learned by looking at small assemCurrent understanding of blies of, for example, 500 particles. Numerical simulations of the these complex phenomena is not The task of building a reduced well enough developed to permit the flow through random arrange- formulation for multiphase flow is ments of spheres and corresponreliable design of optimized industherefore to take the computer output ding effective viscosities. trial systems. In the absence of a of the DNS simulation, develop averrobust theory, it is also difficult to rely on age laws that describe those results, and finally experiment: if one runs tests on a small-scale come up with equations that govern this version of a plant, there is no way to know how reduced system. This is in some sense the the full-scale system would behave. reverse of what is normally done: usually one In principle, since the laws of mechanics starts with the equations and ends up with are known, the equations describing each partinumbers by solving the equations on a comcle or bubble together with the motion of the puter. Needless to say, this reversal of roles surrounding fluid could be solvedan makes things rather complicated and that ultiapproach called Direct Numerical Simulation. mate high-tech toolmathematicshas to In practice, the amount of computational firebe relied upon very heavily to carry out the power necessary to tackle even relatively small job.

Andrea Prosperetti
Charles A. Miller Jr. Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. Engineering Science, California Institute of Technology, 1974 M.S. Engineering Science, California Institute of Technology, 1972 Laurea in Fisica, University di Milano, 1968 Research Interests: Thermal-fluid mechanics of multiphase flows, underwater acoustics, air entrainment, bubbles in liquids

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Aerospace and Marine Systems

In a technique known as Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), a laser beam is expanded into a thin sheet of light, illuminating a seche ME Department at JHU houses the tion of the fluid, and a camera records a multiAxial Turbomachine Facility, a unique labple exposure image of the cloud of particles. oratory funded by the Air Force and the Navy The displacement of particles between expothat is used to study the flow in turbomasures reveals the 2D instantaneous velocity dischines. The term turbomachine refers to a tribution. The problem with using this techdevice that uses rotating elements to transfer nique to study flow in turbomachines is that energy either to or from a continuously moving the multiple blades limit access, both to the fluid. Machines such as compressors and laser and to the pumps add energy camera. Prof. Katz to the fluid, recently solved this increasing the problem by using fluid pressure. acrylic blades and a Gas, steam, or fluid that has the hydraulic turbines same index of absorb energy refraction as the from the fluid, blades, rendering generating power them invisible. in the process. This flow visualizaDesigning tion allowed them highly efficient, to obtain, for the durable, and quiet first time ever, data turbomachines is on the flow at any one of the holy Graduate student Yi-Chih Chow (left) and postdoc Oguz Uzol near the axial grails of mechan- turbomachinery facilitya joint project of Profs. Katz and Meneveau (funded point of the turbomachine. ical engineering. by AFOSR and ONR). Better turbomaQuiet, Please chine technology would affect all of us, from improvements in power generation to quieter urbulence, interacting with solid boundcommercial airplane engines. But design tools aries, generates noise. Underwater, sound for turbomachines are far from optimized, due is the only means of detection, and it propato the complex fluid motion around the rotatgates very efficiently in water, so for subing elements and the sheer numbers of elemarines, any source of noise is a huge problem. ments in a typical turbomachine. A compressor Turbulence also causes structural vibrations for a commercial jet engine has 37 blade rows, that generate additional noise. Engineers do each containing 30100 blades, resulting in a not have reliable tools to predict noise generavery complex machine with an impressive tion due to turbulence; most of what we know 50,000 pounds of thrust. In the turbulent is based on simplified formulations derived flows around the blades, secondary flow phefrom empirical relationships. Unlike other nomena such as wakes and trailing vortices, applications of turbulent flow, studying noise and leakage adversely affect efficiency and perrequires full characterization of turbulence near formance. Noise is also a big problem, from the vicinity of the boundaries, precisely where suburban homeowners under commercial flight most simplified models break down. Because of paths to highly sensitive applications such as limitations in resolution, Direct Numerical pumps in the reactors that power submarines. Simulation, or DNS, (see Computational A better understanding of the fluid dynamics Engineering, page 10), the only accurate within these turbomachines is therefore critical method available, cannot be used to compute to improving design parameters, and Professors the full turbulent flow around bodies in the Joseph Katz and Charles Meneveau, with fundforeseeable future. Consequently, the Navy has ing from the Air Force and the Navy (in sepainvested substantial effort to develop approxirate projects), employ novel flow visualization mate techniques for modeling the turbulence techniques to gain insight into the nature of and its dynamics in the vicinity of boundaries. the flow.

Invisible Turbomachinery

T
Joseph Katz
Professor Whiting School Mechanical Engineering Chaired Professor Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 1982 M.S. Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 1978 B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, 1977 Research Interests: Experimental fluid mechanics, bubble dynamics, cavitation, holography, PIV, naval hydrodynamics, ocean instrumentation

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Aerospace and Marine Systems

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is one such second grant, this time from the NSF, to develapproach. In LES, the equations of motion are op a system that can generate instantaneous solved explicitly for all scales larger than some vector maps of 500 x 500 x 500 vectors. This given threshold (the grid-scale). Motions research requires extensive (not to mention smaller than these (the sub-grid scale) are paraexpensive) new equipment and will take the meterized by a set of models that depend on state of the art in flow visualization to a comvarious simplifying assumptions about the pletely new level. Stay tuned! small-scale dynamics. Profs. Meneveau and Underwater Robots for Katz are conducting 2D and 3D flow visualizaDeep Ocean Exploration tion experiments to modify and improve current LES modeling techniques. ost of the worlds sea floor has never Typical LES models treat turbulence as been observed by human eyes. At presisotropic, meaning that statistical properties of ent, according to Professor Louis Whitcomb, the flow are equal in all directions. In the the surface of the moon has been mapped and vicinity of a boundary, however, turbulence photographed more thoroughly than the subundergoes rapid straining and rotation. This in merged portions of the Earths surface. Only a turn alters the physics of the turbulence, makfew percent of the worlds seafloor is shallow ing it anisotropic. To account for this, modifienough for direct examination by human scuba cations must be made to the sub-grid scale divers. The problem is hydrostatic pressure. models used in LES. (See Computational Every 10 meters of depth adds another atmosEngineering, page 13, for details on LES phere of pressure. In consequence, even mixedmethodology.) gas scuba divers can descend to only about 100 To create a 3D meters. Until recentvelocity distribution of ly, the only way for a the flow in the vicinity scientist to directly of a boundary, Prof. examine the benthic Katz draws upon his floor was to descend experience in holograin a specially phy. In the laboratory, designed deep-diving he seeds a turbulent submarine. The deepflow with particles, and est diving U.S. inhabthen records multipleited submarine, the exposure holograms. DSRV Alvin, can The holograms are descend to 4,500 reconstructed and meters depth, yet this scanned, and he obtains Former graduate student Ralph Bachmeier looking at propeller in a is less than half-way the 3D velocity distributo the oceans deepest marine system. tion from the displacedepth of 11,000 ment of the particles. The data are then spameters. By comparison, Mount Everest is only tially filtered, giving the filtered velocity field 8,848 meters in height. To reach these great and the subgrid stresses. This three-dimensiondepths, Prof. Whitcomb and researchers around al version of the Particle Image Velocimetry the world have developed underwater robotic technique (see Turbomachinery, above), known vehicles that enable scientists to explore, by as Holographic PIV, gives instantaneous vector remote control, these deepest and most inaccesmaps of 130 x 130 x 130 vectorsan unprecesible parts of the ocean. dented level of resolution. This highly resolved Whitcomb and his students have conducted data set is the only one of its kind in the original research on the navigation and control world, and promises to lead to very important systems for these underwater Remotely advances in our understanding of turbulence. Operated Vehicles (ROVs) for over a decade. From the more practical viewpoint of the They collaborate closely with researchers at the Navy, someday this may help solve some seriWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution ous underwater noise problems. (WHOI), where most of the U.S. deep-submerProfs. Katz and Meneveau have joined gence oceanographic vehicles are developed and forces with Professor Shiyi Chen to obtain a

Louis L. Whitcomb
Associate Professor Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Yale university, 1992 M.Phil. Electrical Engineering, Yale University, 1990 M.S. Electrical Engineering, Yale University, 1988 B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, 1984 Research Interests: Adaptive control of robot systems for real-world applications

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Aerospace and Marine Systems

Jason II can help unveil the mysteries of unique life forms, hydrothermal vents, and other natural phenomena of the deep.
operated. Whitcomb is co-developer of the naved submersible Alvin. igation and control system for the Jason ROV, Whitcomb and his students are now colthe deepest diving U.S. ROV presently in operlaborating with WHOI to help develop ation. He and his students participate frequentJASON II, a new vehicle designed to succeed ly in deep-ocean deployments to experimentalJason. It is bigger, stronger, faster, according ly evaluate their newly developed systems. In to Prof. Whitcomb, and will have more sophisJune 1999, for example, Whitcomb and his ticated systems on board, including the navigaPh.D. student David Smallwood tested out a tion systems now being tested. Jason II can new Doppler-based sonar navigation system help unveil the mysteries of unique life forms, with their WHOI collaborators in the hydrothermal vents, and other natural pheMediterranean Sea between Malta and Israel. nomena of the deep. Prof. Whitcomb, by This expedition was led by leading geologist designing Jason IIs brains, has an important and oceanographic explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, role to play in this exciting future of deep sea and Harvard University archaeologist Dr. exploration. Lawrence Stager. On this expedition, equipped Cavitation with video and still cameras, sonar devices, and a robotic arm, Jason photographed and explored av.i.ta.tion \ kav i ta shun \ n [1. the the topography of several pre-Roman shiprapid formation and collapse of vapor wrecks, sending the data to a ship on the surpockets in a flowing liquid in regions of very face via a fiber-optic cable. The artifacts doculow pressure. 2. such a pocket formed.] mented and recovered for the archaeologists by (Webster). Like any little boy with a penchant the Jason team dated from about 750 BC, and for watching things explode, Professor Joe they reveal clues about trading routes, economKatz has had a lifelong fascination with the ic and political alliances, and lifestyles in problem of cavitation. ancient cultures. Before the development of In a water environment, cavitation occurs vehicles like Jason, it was infeasible to explore when the pressure in a certain region falls shipwrecks deeper than the scuba divers limit. below the vapor pressure of the surrounding An invaluable museum of human history lies water, causing the sudden creation of a cavity waiting on the 97% of the ocean floor that of gas that then rapidly and explosively colremains unexplored. lapses. Situations like this occur around proBack at Hopkins Prof. Whitcomb and his peller blades, around hydro-turbine blades in PhD students built and, in August 2000, hydroelectric power generation, and in pumps. launched their own ROV, the JHU ROV. They The result is a very noisy, very destructive have tested it in the United States Naval event. The Glen Canyon Dam had to be shut Academys 380-foot The Glen Canyon Dam had to be shut down down after only 15 test basin. Whitcomb after only 15 years of operation because cavita- years of operation and his students use because cavitation data they gather dur- tion events from the turbine blades ate through events from the tura three-foot wall of concrete. ing these tests to bine blades ate develop accurate mathematical models of the through a three-foot wall of concrete. The vehicles dynamics, which in turn allows them noisy belch of a cavitation event around a ship to design improved control systems. They also propeller can be heard underwater from 70 to use this ROV to field-test new designs. Once 100 miles away; an inconvenient here I am these designs are validated by field-testing, announcement for naval vessels that prefer to Prof. Whitcombs group can quickly transition roam silently. them for use on other vehicles. Probably the most dramatic example of In June 2001, Prof. Whitcomb and his stucavitation occurs in the oxidizer fuel pump in dent James Kinsey again went to sea to test the space shuttles main engine, which operates their newly developed sonar navigation system at about 80,000 HP (for comparison, a traccalled DVL NAV aboard the new WHOI vehitor-trailer is about 500 HP) with a 14-inch cle DSL120A. Whitcomb and his students impeller. During the space shuttles design developed the new navigation system on the phase in the 1970s, instabilities caused by cavJHU ROV, and have successfully deployed it itation in this pump caused repeated engine on the new DSL120A vehicle and the inhabit-

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Robotics and Human-Machine Interaction

blowup. Even now, cavitation-related instabilities in liquid fuel rocket pumps are a major problem, and cavitation control is a primary design factor in these engines. Because situations that lead to cavitation involve turbulent flow and a very rapid phase changeon the order of microsecondsthe phenomenon has proved very difficult to study in the laboratory, and, as a result, difficult to model. Profs. Katz and Knio and their team go small-scale to tackle this problem. They simulate real cavitation situations by creating carefully controlled flow conditions in JHUs experimental fluid dynamics laboratory. They study the cavitation phenomenon, as well as the flow that caused the cavitation, in detail at very high magnification using microscopy, PIV techniques (see Turbomachinery, above), highspeed photography (up to 3,000 frames per second), and noise and pressure measurements. Data obtained from these explorations of the relationship between flow structure and cavitation may someday allow engineers to develop a way to control the phenomenon.

Laboratory Robots

Rotor for a spherical motor

Stator for a spherical motor

n the basement of Latrobe Hall lives a mechanical arm that, purely through pneumatic on/off switches operating pistons on a series of joints, can maneuver a tool into any pre-programmed position. An algorithm translates the users input of a spatial coordinate into a series of on/off switches for the pistons on the arm that take it to that coordinate. This superarm, designed by Professor Gregory Chirikjian, can perform highly repetitive tasks efficiently and cheaply, even fairly complicated ones involving a series of movements, such as placing parts in an assembly line. For situations in which the motion desired by the robot cannot be programmed ahead of time, engineers depend on motors that can provide as many degrees of freedom as possible. One degree of freedom means that the motor can move, say, up and down; two degrees means that it can go up and down and side to side, and so on. In each joint of a robotic arm there is a motor, and the more degrees of freedom that motor has, the more general its movement can be. Consider the amazing apparatus that is our shoulder joint its range of motion is phenomenal. Attach it to the highly articulated elbow and wrist joints, and the human hand becomes a truly miraculous tool, able to reach with ease in any place or any direction. Engineers have good reason to want to mimic this range of motion robotically. The closest they have come is the spherical motor, a motor that can rotate in a sphere around any axis. Prof. Chirikjian and his student David Stein have recently built a spherical stepper motor. The moving portion of the motor is a hollow plastic sphere in which magnets have been placed in a regular pattern. This sphere is placed in a cap containing several soft iron cores that are polarized to form a magnetic field. The whole arrangement looks a bit like an egg (albeit a spherical egg) in an egg cup. A current is run through the coils in the cap, changing the magnetic field, and the plastic sphere moves in response. Although Chirikjians group is one of many working on the design of a spherical motor, theirs has distinct advantages. In most current spherical motors, the egg-cup part of the motor has to envelop the rotor, whereas Chirikjians cap is less than a hemisphere and thus provides a greater degree of freedom of movement.

Gregory S. Chirikjian
Professor Joint Appointment, Computer Science Ph.D. Applied Mechanics, California institure of Technology, 1992 M.S.E. Mechanical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, 1988 B.S. Engineering Mechanics, The Johns Hopkins University, 1988 B.A. Mathematics, The Johns Hopkins University, 1988 Research Interests: Robotics, mechanical design, applications of group theory in engineering, dynamics of biological macromolecules

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Robotics and Human-Machine Interaction

Spherical motors would fill engineering needs in many important applications. Robotic wrist, elbow, and shoulder actuators might be used in small spaces where a human arm would not fit, such as in surgical procedures, or in uninhabitable environments. For a computer to see, a camera (its eye) would have to operate like our eyes, smoothly tracking an object as it moves within the field of vision. A roaming robot with three spherical-motor wheels under it becomes omni-directional. An object placed on a platform made up of an array of spherical motors could move smoothly in any direction. ture, hardness/softness, weight, temperature, and shape. Scientists know very little of how the brain processes sensory experiences, particularly haptic ones, and so it is impossible at this point to recreate a true haptic experience in virtual reality. But Prof. Okamura is tackling the problem one step at a time, using simple robotic systems and complex models. Eventually, she hopes to help build a virtual reality environment that can give feedback on many of the important pieces of a haptic experience, making virtual reality feel real. The model she is developing must translate data that a robot takes from a real environment into a motor-driven combination of acceleraHaptic Happiness tion, force, and position that will be delivered to a human hand on the other end of a stylus, eedle insertion is a challenging task, thereby allowing the human to feel the enviespecially in areas with little room for ronment that the robot does. Prof. Okamuras error. Brachy-therapy for prostate cancer, for masters student, Christina Simone, is currentexample, is the localized placement of sealed ly working on a needle insertion system in radioactive sources (seeds) using 6-inch long, which a robot performs many real needle inser18-gauge needles. The target area for seed tions in various organs, all the while recording delivery is a small volume (40-50 ccs) with data on force, acceleration, and position. limited access and through a small cross-secOnce the haptic experience of poking is tional area of the perineum. At least 20 needles fully modeled, she can move her robot on to must be inserted to place anywhere from 80 to using scissor-like tools, exploring the forces 150 seeds. These constraints make the proceinvolved in grasping and cutting. Eventually, dure very difficult to perform. To practice, these individual haptic experiences can be physicians use phantoms, or non-biological woven together to form a modeled reality substitutes for human flesh and bone. Even the that feels more like the real thing. best phantoms, however, canThe data collected in Okamuras not come close to the comresearch could find use in various plexity of textures and the applications such as training simulaindividual variability of true tions, telerobotics, and cooperative human anatomy. (assistive) robots. In robotic proceAlternatively, some surgeons dures, data coming in real time are turning to virtual envicould be compared to some idealized ronment training tools to model and used to give the doctor practice their technique. One feedback on his/her performance. In of these, which trains suraddition, feedback from real needle geons for endoscopic sinus Haptic Forceps/Scissors insertions could also be compared surgery, uses a virtual enviwith data collected from phantoms ronment created from MRI images. But and used to improve the materials that make because these images are limited to data about up phantoms, making them more realistic. The shape, not stiffness or texture, doctors are not possibility exists, notes Okamura, for satisfied with it, insisting that it does not autonomous robotic procedures, where the feel realistic. robot does an entire procedure on its own, Professor Allison Okamura envisions although she believes that these are many years another approach, one in which a robot plays away. an important role. Okamura is an expert in robotic haptic exploration. When we touch something, we have a haptic experience of that object that includes sensations such as tex-

Allison Okamura
Assistant Professor Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering Stanford University, 2000 M.S., Mechanical Engineering Stanford University,1996 B.S., Mechanical Engineering University of California at Berkeley, 1994 Research Interests: haptic exploration with robotic fingers, vibration and force feedback in virtual environments, and assistive robotics

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Robotics and Human-Machine Interaction

The Microsurgical Assistant
umans possess an extraordinary tactile dexterity, yet we are designed to manipulate tools and perform tasks on the scale of our own bodies. Microsurgical operations require exquisite dexterity, yet even the steadiest-handed doctor still has an imperceptible hand tremor, on the order of tens of microns. Moreover, humans cannot accurately gauge tactile forces less than a few grams. These limits on human tactile performance directly determine the feasible limits of microsurgical procedures. Recently, researchers from the JHU School of Engineering and the JHU Medical School collaborated to develop a novel robot to enhance a surgeons tactile performance. This new robot, called the Steady Hand Robot, extends a surgeons ability to perform smallscale manipulation tasksespecially tasks requiring human judgment, sensory integration and eye-hand coordination. In the steady hand system, the surgical tool is held simultaneously by the surgeons hand and a robotic arm. The robotic arm has a controller that senses the forces exerted by the human hand on the tool, and by the tool on the environment. It can then scale down the force of the surgeons hand to provide precise, delicate movements that are virtually tremorfree. It also amplifies minute tool-tip forces to the surgeons hand, thus amplifying the surgeons sense of touch. Professor Whitcomb and his students have developed novel control algorithms for this robot. A prototype of the steady-hand system was developed with Professor Russell Taylor of the Department of Computer Science and Eugene deJuan, MD of the JHU Wilmer Eye Institute. They are presently experimentally evaluating the systems performance in collaboration with Daniel Rothbaum, MD, and John K. NiParko, MD, from JHUs Department of Otolaryngology. One form of hearing loss, otosclerosis, is caused by the immobilization of the stapes bone in the middle ear. A surgical procedure to correct it, stapedotomy, involves removing a portion of the stapes bone, drilling a tiny hole in the piece thats left, and connecting a little piston-like prosthesis to another bone in the middle ear with a wire crimp. With the prosthesis in place, sound vibrations can propagate through to the inner ear, restoring hearing. To perform this procedure with a steadyhand robot, the surgeon holds a stylus, attached to the robotic arm, with a surgical tool at the tip. The robot operates under a proportional velocity control during the crimping procedure, in which virtually no tremor propagates to the instrument tip. Users feel that their hands are steadied. In forcecontrol mode, used in the drilling procedure, small contact forces between the instrument and the user feel amplified, allowing the surgeon to exert tiny forces that would otherwise be below the threshold of human tactile sensation. Using a full-scale instrumented model of the human ear, the Hopkins researchers are comparing assisted and unassisted outcomes of the drilling and crimping procedures. The development of the Steady Hand Robot holds enormous promise. From delicate surgical procedures like stapedotomy to the injection of stem cells into the cochlea, which cannot be done manually, to directly breaking up blood clots in veins or arteries, it may well fundamentally change what is considered possible in medicine. Surgical robots may change medicine in a manner similar to the way that the development of the integrated circuit revolutionized information processing in the 20th century. This work done by Hopkins researchers is an example of successful interdisciplinary and interdepartmental work that taps into the extraordinary skills of all the researchers involved.

From delicate surgical procedures like stapedotomy to the injection of stem cells into the cochlea, which cannot be done manually, to directly breaking up blood clots in veins or arteries, it may well fundamentally change what is considered possible in medicine.

3-degree-of-freedom haptic interface

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Energy and the Environment

measure of the amount of dissipation and shear stress occurring at the surface, in the form of wind shear, and at the ocean floor, in the form s the fuel tanks in Naval ships are of boundary layer turbulence. depleted during a voyage, the fuel has to There are currently no reliable data on the be replaced with water, lest the ship become shear stresses at the ocean floor and their relaunstable. When the ship refuels, the added tion to large scale forcing (such as tides, curwater is dumped out, and inevitably some fuel rents and waves). Past goes with it, causing enviexperiments, done with ronmental concern. With point measurements, lack funding from the US Navy, sufficient resolution, and Professor Joe Katz is studyare not capable of separating the mixing of water and ing waves from turbulence. fuel, and the subsequent In experiments conducted transport of oil droplets off the coast of New Jersey, within turbulent flows. In a Professors Osborn and Katz special laboratory devoted to used a submersible PIV this problem, Prof. Katz and system to record instantahis team use flow visualization techniques to identify Graduate student, Xiongun Wu with oil-water mixng neous spatial velocity distributions and sediment specific phenomena that apparatus (funded by NAVSEA) entrainment, initially lead to mixing of oil and within a 20x20 cm sample area and then in water in a tank; for example, a fuel jet impingtwo 50x50 cm samples simultaneously, over a ing on an interface, or development of a shear range of elevations from 10 cm to 1.4 m above layer. They quantify the amount of mixing that the bottom. A new platform can scan up to 40 takes place and study the statistics of how the feet above the bottom. Because the PIV techdroplets migrate. Because the geometry of the nique resolves a spatial, instead of a temporal, tanks can be quite complex, there is a pressing picture of the flow, it is possible to distinguish need for improved computational tools to betthe wave dynamics from the turbulence. They ter design the tanks and minimize the mixing have probed the complex interaction between of oil and water. The data generated by Prof. turbulence and waves, and found that the turKatz in the fuel mixing lab is being used for bulence in this boundary layer appears to be calibrating models that will predict the fuel anisotropic at all scales. Current models assume content in the water for a given tank geometry. that turbulent flow in the oceans is isotropic Under the Sea (the statistics are the same in all directions), and without data to the contrary, there was no uilding on the success of his flow visureason to challenge that assumption. But the alization techniques studying turbuPIV data generated by Professors Katz and lence in turbomachinery and LES applications, Osborn provides modelers with a more accuProfessor Joe Katz and Professor Tom Osborn rate scenario, one they can work with to develof JHUs Department of Earth and Planetary op more realistic representations of ocean flow. Sciences have taken the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique under the sea to Plankton explore the flow near the bottom of the ocean. n essential lower link of Earths food (For details of the PIV technique, see chain, plankton are the diet of choice for Turbomachines, in the Aerospace and Marine sperm whales, whale sharks, fishes, fish larvae, Systems section). Ocean flow dynamics have a anemonesbig plankton even feed on little huge impact on weather, climate, and marine plankton, and zooplankton feed on phytoplanklife. And because the ocean is relatively shalton. These tiny marine organisms baffle low, especially in coastal areas (its horizontal researchers on several fronts. It is unclear why extent is far larger than its vertical extent), turthey concentrate in particular areas, or why they bulence generated at the bottom and the free suddenly appear and disappear. Some species are surface plays a large part in the flow dynamics. toxic to fishes and humans. In the phenomenon To be able to predict ocean flows and energy known as the red tides, plankton cluster in budgets accurately, researchers need a good

Oil-Water mixing

Because the PIV technique resolves a spatial, instead of a temporal, picture of the flow, it is possible to distinguish the wave dynamics from the turbulence.
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Energy and the Environment

because the huge Reynolds Numbers in atmosvast clouds, consume all the food in the area, pheric flow and the size of the physical domain and then disappear, and researchers have no preclude the use of direct numerical methods. good explanation for why these creatures appear to simply eat themselves out of existence. Some In Large Eddy Simulation (LES), the equaplankton luminesce in tions of motion are response to shear, caussolved explicitly for all ing problems for the scales larger than some Navy, since this lumigiven threshold (the nescence effectively grid-scale) and motions announces the presence smaller than these (the of a submarine to anysub-grid scale) are one in the vicinity or to parameterized by a set satellites. of models that depend Professor Joe Katz is on various simplifying studying plankton with Holography system mounted on manned submersible. The system assumptions about the allows recording holograms of ocean plankton in situ. Top left: a Dr. Edith Widder, a small-scale dynamics. copepod captured in a hologram. Bottom right: 30 velocity world expert in biolumi- distribution (funded by NSF). Current atmospheric nescence from the LES suffers from a lack Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, and of experimental data on the finer scale physics postdoctoral researcher Dr. Ed Mekiel. In a divof atmospheric dynamics. Professors Charles ing expedition off the Gulf of Maine, they colMeneveau and Marc Parlange (of JHUs lected data on plankton with a submersible Department of Geography and Environmental holographic camera that records Engineering) are not comfortin situ holograms of sample able with the assumptions volumes of ocean water. When made by many of the current reconstructed, these holograms sub-grid scale models. create a 3D image of the origiIn a venue far removed from nal sample volume that can be the carefully controlled examined in the laboratory. wind and water tunnel laboratoThey scan the volume with a ries, Professors Parlange and microscope to a resolution of Meneveau have done 310 microns, revealing a several groundbreaking experithree-dimensional picture of ments that record turbulent the various species of plankton velocity, temperature and and their distribution in space. humidity data in the atmosPhotograph and schematic of array of sonic These multi-exposure holopheric surface layer over large grams are used for measuring anemometers during a collaborative field experi- fields. In a succession of field ment between NCAR and JHU, Kettleman the flow and reveal a story of campaigns in Iowa and City, CA, summer 2000 (Funded by NSF). the planktons behavior over California, fine-scale measuretime, providing a unique window on the interments were made over the past three summers action between plankton species and the condiusing arrays of vertically and horizontally arranged anemometers. This has allowed them tions under which they tend to gather or to to explore properties of the sub-grid scale modluminesce. els, for the first time based directly on field Atmospheric Turbulence experimental data. In addition, they have developed several new modeling approaches based on eightened interest in the transport and the insights gained from these experiments. fate of atmospheric pollutants and the impact of turbulent dynamics on large-scale Bubbles in Space climatic flow patterns have made atmospheric turbulence an increasingly important area of hen microelectronic components heat research. Large Eddy Simulation (see computaup, cycling fluid around them is a great tional engineering) has emerged as one of the way to cool them off (see Micro-cool, in best ways to model atmospheric turbulence, Micro/nanoscale Science and Engineering, page

Charles meneveau
Professor Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, 1989 M. Phil. Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, 1988 M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, 1987 B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Univ. Tcnica F.S.M. Valparaso, Chile, 1985 Research Interests: Theoretical, experimental, and numerical studies in turbulence. Large-eddy-Simulation and modeling, fractals

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Energy and the Environment

5). To provide even more cooling, engineers while it heads up, and thenfeet down, comexploit the large amounts of energy consumed ing around 25 seconds of 2G while it in boiling. So much energy is required to break plunges back down the parabola. Over the the bonds and rearrange the atoms from the course of the 2 hour flight, this is repeated 40 liquid to the gaseous phase that even when to 60 times. During those 25 seconds of microenergy continues to be added to the system, the gravity, the scientists have to concentrate on temperature of the liquid stays constant. And getting good data. During the transition, its because gas is less dense than liquid, the bubimportant to be upright and away from the bles move away from the hot surface, cooling it. equipment, since falling on ones head or getEngineers routinely use boiling to cool ting bonked by something at 2G can be very equipment. But boiling only cools things when painful. During the 25 seconds of 2G, the buoyant bubbles leave the hot surface. As researchers have to hustle their suddenly any hurried cook knows, putting an empty pot extremely cumbersome arms, legs, and hands to boil ruins the pot. In a micro-gravity envito get the setup ready for the next take. Just ronment, bubbles dont risethe gas created reaching over and operating a valve is a huge by boiling remains trapped next to the hot sureffort under these conditions. To make things face, which often does not worse, almost everyone get cooled well. In order gets nauseous. Its a to use boiling in space, shame to waste valuable engineers must find research time throwing up another way to move the (special bags for that purbubbles. Prof. Cila pose are stacked into Herman is pioneering one pockets of the flight suit interesting possibility at the beginning of the using electric fields. She flight and regularly coland post-doctoral lected by the NASA researcher Estelle Iacona crew), but sometimes it and visiting scholar cant be helped. Prof. Istvn Fldes modeled the Herman was proud to fundamentals of this bubreport that she never sucble formation problem cumbed. She was also and have begun testing impressed by Math their theory experimental- Detailed high-speed photography of the coalescence and bubble Sciences Prof. and Chair ly. As a first step, they are growth processes during microgravity. Top photograph shows Ed Scheinerman who Prof. Herman with graduate students aboard NASAs working with electric managed to eat breakfast Weightless Wonder. fields in the laboratory, before a flight with no ill looking at the behavior of single isothermal effects. bubbles. In 19992000, Prof. Herman went on The next step is to see how electric fields three parabolic flights, accompanied at various affect bubble behavior in micro-gravity conditimes by graduate student Gorkem Suner, once tions. With funding from NASA, Prof. by Prof. Scheinerman, and once by graduate Herman conducted her experiments on a plane student Steven Marra. Data collected from officially nicknamed the Weightless Wonder these experiments in micro-gravity indicate and fondly known by researchers as the Vomit that an increased electric field causes the bubComet. ble to elongate and move away from the surEarly in the morning of one of these paraface, bearing out their predictions. The bolic flights, a number of scientists (there are remaining task is to digitally analyze the data several experiments on each flight), a doctor to calculate the force components involved. At and the NASA support crew climb aboard the the moment, they are running more experiKC135 military aircraftthe same one that ments back on the ground, and tentatively was used to film Apollo 13. They are strongscheduled to fly an experiment in conjunction ly encouraged to refrain from eating breakfast. with a team from NASA on the space station The airborne plane goes into a series of steep in 2004. rises and falls25 seconds of microgravity

Cila herman
Associate Professor Dr.-Ing. Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Munich and University of Hannover, Germany, 1992 M.S. Control Engineering, University of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, 1998 B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, 1982 Research Interests: Experimental heat transfer and fluid flow, heat transfer augmentation, thermoacoustics, optical techniques

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Mechanical Engineering in Biology and Medicine

Put Your Heart Into It
Professor K.T. Ramesh and Associate Dean Andrew Douglas form the faculty core of JHUs Laboratory for Active Materials and Biomimetics (LAMB), JHUs contribution to this effort. They characterize the mechanical and electromechanical properties of natural materials as well as active materials that are supposed to mimic nature. They also generate active materials though tissue engineering. Prof. Ramesh explains that there are two basic approaches to biomimetics: in the first, the researcher takes a material concept from nature, like the material of a seashell or the fibrous muscles of the heart, and uses that concept in an artificial system. The second approach looks at the functional concept in nature, in an attempt to isolate the mechanisms responsible for the unique way a certain material works. To understand muscle material, for example, researchers look at how muscle fibers undergo a complicated dance of contracting and swelling in preferred directions through the diffusion of calcium. Because muscle itself is highly variable from one person to the next and from one part of the body to another, this involves huge numbers of experiments on muscle tissue and extensive data mining. The functional approach preferred by Profs. Ramesh and Douglas instead centers around an artificial analogy based on the mechanism occurring in muscle tissue. They build a mathematical model that mimics the mathematics of the natural phenomena they wish to understand, and then work their way backwards through various artificial models until they are at a point where they can consider the actual biological processes taking place. Prof. Douglas collaborates with Professor Bill Hunter and his former PhD student John Criscione of JHUs Biomedical Engineering Department, using experimental materials to refine their mathematical models of muscle function. The mathematical description first isolates important mechanical concepts such as strain, activation, and time dependency. How much internal force (or stress) causes muscle

rom an engineering standpoint, a person with a good heart possesses an organ that can produce a 60% change in volume as it contracts. Very little is actually known about the mechanical properties of the human heart. For Professor Jean-Franois Molinari, an object undergoing a large deformation like this is a perfect opportunity to apply constitutive modeling techniques. Not only is it a multiphysics problem, involving chemistry, biology, and mechanics, but it is also an optimization problem. What is the ideal shape of the heart? What is the ideal orientation pattern for the muscle fibers as they contract in response to an electrical pulse? Surgeons currently operate on patients with poor hearts (<30% volume change on contraction) by altering the organ from a roundish shape to a football shape. The surgery is highly empirical, and it is probable that finite element modeling can be used to optimize the procedure. Prof. Molinari is enthusiastic about the possibility of interacting with JHUs Biomedical Engineering Department to apply his expertise in constitutive modeling to biomechanical problems.

Andrew S. Douglas
Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Whiting School of Engineering Joint Appointment, Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. Engineering Mechanics, Brown University, 1982 Sc.M. Engineering Mechanics, Brown University, 1979 M.Sc. Civil Engineering, University of Cape Town, 1977 B.Sc. Civil Engineering, University of Cape Town, 1975 Research Interests: Soft tissue mechanics, active materials, fracture

Mimicking Mother Nature

ts doubtful whether the little creatures that inhabit seashells can fully appreciate the amazing structures in which they live. But engineers and materials scientists certainly do. Seashells are incredibly hard and strong, yet amazingly lightweight. Materials scientists would dearly love to have the cosmic recipe for making this kind of material, along with blueprints for other nifty things like tooth enamel, cartilage, and muscle. Materials like this could be used in countless ways; the market possibilities are huge. The fact that it took billions of years for these things to evolve doesnt faze engineersthey hope to be able to come up with workable copies in a matter of decades.

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Mechanical Engineering in Biology and Medicine

fibers to move, and how does their movement evolve over time? Like rubber bands, muscle fibers elongate, and strain is a measure of their elongation per unit length. But while rubber bands double their length or more when pulled, muscle fibers only elongate up to about 25% and can also contract when activated. While muscles are activated by the concentration of calcium ions, the artificial materials used in the LAMB lab are complex polymers that respond to a change in pH of the environment. They have been able to mimic the deformation characteristics of smooth muscle fibers isotropically, that is, swelling and contracting with strains between 2% and 25%, in all directions evenly. The next step, according to Douglas, is to make the material work in a preferred direction, as muscle tissue does. Medicine, on a different approach; using harvested chondrocytes to create living tissue that can replace cartilage. Unfortunately, this is anything but straightforward. The type of collagen matrix excreted by the chondrocytes depends on whether they receive the correct mechanical stimulation. Inside the body, the cells experience a mechanical load and generate the right kind of collagen. Outside the body, if the cells experience no load, the matrix produced is stiff and inflexible, resembling scar tissue instead of cartilage. Theory holds that these cells have little receptors that sense load/deformation changes, and in response, the cell produces a certain type of collagen. Create a mechanical load on the harvested cells, and they might excrete the right kind of collagen. But what kind of load? And is it the load itself or merely the deformation caused by the load that causes the cells to do what they do? If they could figure out the kind of mechanical environment the cells want to see, says Prof. Ramesh, then they could optimize the engineering of replacement cartilage. To explore this, Prof. Ramesh takes living cells and places them in artificial scaffolds made out of an inactive polymer. Then he subjects the whole scaffold to various loads or deformations. Afterward, he and Dr. Frondoza extract the cells and examine how the cells grow and reproduce while under the load, to find the appropriate load needed to generate tissue at an accelerated rate for eventual implantation into a joint. The work done by Profs. Ramesh and Frondoza on cartilage cells may one day be applied to problems involving other cell types (e.g., bone cells), in the hope that by engineering living tissues, various debilitating conditions might be eased or cured.

K.T. Ramesh
Professor and Department Chair Joint Appointment, Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. Solid Mechanics, Brown University, 1987 Sc.M. Applied Mathematics, Brown University, 1987 Sc.M. Solid Mechanics, Brown University, 1985 B.E. Mechanical Engineering, Bangalore University, 1982 Research Interests: Material failure at high strain rates, composite materials, biomimetics, active materials, rheology of microstructured fluids

Pain in the Knee

ccasionally, we think nature could do better. It would be nice if we had a limitless tooth supply, like sharks. And the fact that cartilage does not regenerate itself is a very real pain, especially in joints like the knee. Cartilage is formed when a special bunch of cells, called chondrocytes, excrete an extracellular matrix containing collagen (among other things). This matrix provides the unique mechanical and lubricating conditions we need in our joints. In healthy tissue, the chondrocytes keep churning out the extracellular matrix as needed, and we move about without giving it a thought. But lose those chondrocytes to a disease like arthritis, and its curtains for your cartilage. They dont regenerate. Even the best polymer replacements degrade over time and have to be replaced every two years or so. Prof. Ramesh is working with Dr. Carmelita Frondoza, a cell biologist in the Department of Orthopedics at JHUs School of

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Mechanical Engineering in Biology and Medicine

part on understanding the mechanics of those joints. By using computational techniques developed for robotics research, they are studyhe work that Professor Gregory Chirikjian ing proteins by applying classical mechanics to has done modeling and designing highly the bonds between atoms. In one modeling articulated robotic arms has an unusual biologapproach, every atom in a protein is simulated, ical application at the nanoscalein our and the complex mechanics and chemistry govunderstanding of molecules, particularly proerning the bonding and folding of the amino teins. Present in all living cells, proteins are acid chain are carefully calculated. This is formed when ribosomes, acting upon instructime-consuming; a supercomputer needs a tions from a messenger RNA template, string month to produce what it takes nature a matthousands of amino acids together into long ter of seconds to accomplish; a folded protein. chains. Within minutes these chains then Prof. Chirikjian is working on coarse-grainfold, like long shoelaces, into complex strucing these models to tures. But out of the improve the efficiency of huge numbers of possible the calculations while still structures into which a maintaining accuracy. given chain of amino Using spatial-averaging acids could fold, only one techniques he developed allows that particular in his robotics research, he protein to function prophopes to be able to model erly. The human body the fluctuating protein forms at least 30,000 difwithin minutes on a PC. ferent proteins. Protein folding is a Alzheimers disease, cyscompetitive and exciting tic fibrosis, and possibly area of research because certain types of cancer Actin Protein there is a huge amount of are among the diseases medical progress and financial profit to be caused when something goes wrong with the made from solving this problem. Once way a protein is folded. researchers understand how the atoms in a proThe question is, Why, out of all those postein behave under standard conditions, they sible geometries, does the protein end up in can explore how the mechanics, and thus the one particular shape? What causes it to go folding, would be altered if different forces wrong in certain cases? And what does this were in place. The ramifications of these dishave to do with mechanical engineering? coveries would be felt throughout the biotech Biologists have typically assumed that the industryfrom protein manufacturing, to atomic bonds in molecules are simple lock drug design, to genetic engineering. Perhaps and key mechanisms, and the molecule a rigid the process that goes awry in patients with structure. We now know that the bonds Alzheimers or other diseases involving misbetween atoms are highly flexible, allowing the formed proteins could be discovered, and a molecule to deform, fluctuate, or vibrate in treatment found. The race to develop an accuresponse to its environment, and that individrate model also makes practical senseit takes ual atoms within a molecule might also influsix months or more for experimentalists to ence each other. image a single normal protein using Nuclear Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, as Magnetic Resonance Imaging or X-ray data. well as the Homewood campus Biophysics Working at that rate, the possibility of analyzDepartment, are hotbeds of protein folding ing all the human proteins seems remote. But research, and Prof. Chirikjian has recently if a fast, reliable, and accurate algorithm can be joined the effort in an unusual way. He and his developed, we might actually see some of the colleague Robert Jernigan of the NIH point applications of an improved understanding of out that the atoms in complex molecules like protein folding and mechanics within a proteins are joined together much like the generation. joints in an arm, and the key to understanding how a protein folds and fluctuates depends in

Protein Folding

out of the huge numbers of possible structures into which a given chain of amino acids could fold, only one allows that particular protein to function properly.

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Senior Design Projects

ach year ME seniors take a yearlong design course taught by Professor Andy Conn and assisted by Undergraduate Lab Coordinator Curt Ewing. Students working in groups of two or three select small-scale engineering design problems suggested and funded by corporations, government, or non-profit agencies. With funding for FY 2001 not exceeding $8,000 per project, the students handled every aspect of the design process, from brainstorming possible solutions to preparing a budget to purchasing equipment and putting together a final device or product. In the first semester, they present oral reports describing how they settled on their final solution to the problem. At the end of the year, their final devices or products are presented and demonstrated in a special two-day series of presentations, with industry representatives and ASME judges present. The ASME judges selected Team ARMED as this years awardwinning project. This year, Professor Conn and Mr. Ewing guided 12 projects to conclusion. Below are brief capsules of each project.

equipment. The students lift was powered pneumatically by a scuba tank and operated with a pulley mechanism. It was portable, weatherproof and cost-efficient, could access varying heights, was easily interfaced with playground equipment, and met strict safety requirements. Students: Christian Callaghan (now working in an architectural firm in Chicago), Denise Koh, and Nate Kruis.

Project CAMERA (Computer Aided Monitoring Equipment for Remote Analysis)

A paper products manufacturing company funded this project that asked students to come up with a way to monitor and diagnose problems with a food packaging machine. When the machines are off-line, valuable product and time is lost waiting for a technician to come service them. The students came up with the remote sensing equipment and software program that enables a technician to diagnose the machine from an off-site location. Students: Cara Libby (will be at Stanford in Fall 2001), Angus Shee (headed for Northrop Grumman Corp.), and Zheng Xu.

Project CHIPS (Chilling and Piping System)

This project, funded by Johnson Controls Inc. was a scale-model of the chilled-water flow system that is used to cool and heat buildings on the Homewood campus, as well as a software program for simulating the campus cooling system. The students built a threelevel miniature model of the cooling systemeach level represented a building. Their software determined the heating/cooling loads for the buildings under normal conditions and three extreme events heavy traffic, hundred-degree days, and plant capacity loss. They found that their chilled water configuration could meet those extreme events. Students: Des Jui, Scott Martorana, and Craig Miller.

Project GATE (Guard Against Tumbling Exits)

With funding for FY 2001 not exceeding $8,000 per project, the students handled every aspect of the design process, from brainstorming possible solutions to preparing a budget to purchasing equipment and putting together a final device or product.
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Every year, several deaths occur and thousands of hospitalizations result from children falling out of high-rise apartment building windows, particularly in public housing complexes. This project, funded by the JHU Center for Injury Research and Prevention, was a window guard designed to prevent these kinds of injuries. Current guards have drawbacksthey dont permit entry from the outside (for firefighters), kids can pretty quickly figure out how to release them, and there are no security features that let the resident know when the guard has been released. The Denise Koh in Project RUDY students came up with a Project RUDY (Raising durable, detachable guard system, with a childUp Disabled Youth) proof latch and integrated alarm system. They took advantage of work done on safety release This project, funded by Volunteers for Medical mechanisms by last years team GAT, who did Engineering and the JHU BME Department, extensive research into mental and physical asked students to design a lift that would challenges for young children in the design of allow disabled children to access playground
WILL KIRK

Senior Design Projects

an anti-firing mechanism for handguns. Fellow classmates enjoyed acting as firemen, bashing their way through the guard using fire axes. Current guards run $70$100 each; their improved version could be made for $150. Students: Mike Barnard (headed for an engineering firm in Pittsburgh) and Howard Ku. which provided the rapid rates of shearing required to evaluate these slurries. Students: Josh Mengers (now at the Army Research Laboratory), Jenna Mikus (now at Andersen Consulting), and Tyler Tom.

Project NSYNCC (Northrop Grumman Shakeless Yet Not Costly Cart)

As electronic equipment is moved on carts from a calibration facility on moving equipment such as forklifts, it gets jostled about as the carts bump over cracks, vibrate on rough floor surfaces, dip into potholes, or occasionally run into walls. As a result, delicate equipment gets knocked out of calibration. Northrop Grumman asked the students to come up with a cart that could protect equipment subjected to 8-10 Gs of force, and not to exceed $1,500 in price. It had to hold items of varying size, prevent them from sliding on the shelving, have securely latching doors, be able to fit onto a forklift, and it had to be weather resistant and operable by a single person. The students novel design used foam and carpeting, combined with dampers on the shelving and a suspension system under the cart. Their cart had stackable bins, semi-pneumatic tires, a special forklift mating system, and a nice changeable sign on the front. And when bought in sets of 20, each cart costs only $1,369.02! They had fun testing the cart with the help of a shaker table, a brick wall, some accelerometers, and an oscilloscope. Students: Josh Buckley (headed for Lehman Brothers), Kevin Leiske (working in sales for Modine Corp.), and Howard Turner.

Project ARMED (Actuated Reusable Miniature Electronic Door)

In space, sensing equipment is at the mercy of micrometeorites and extreme temperature and UV fluctuations. To protect sensors while not in use, the Space Department of JHUs Applied Physics Laboratory asked students to come up with a door mechanism that could be remotely opened and closed. It had to use minimal voltage (5V DC) and be lightweight, able to withstand temperature ranges of -90 C to +90 C, have a rotating angle of 180 degrees, and a latching system with feedback control. The students settled on a flip-top design and an aluminum alloy material. They used a set of springs made from a shape memory alloy as actuators, and subjected the whole device to a vibration test to simulate takeoff conditions. Students: Matt Eby (headed for University of Colorado, Boulder), Seth Hubbard (now at the Naval Surface Warfare Center), and Song Hwang (headed for Cornell University).

In space, sensing equipment is at the mercy of micrometeorites and extreme temperature and UV fluctuations. (Project ARMED)

Project ACDC (Automated Control of Drainage and Concentration)

Sponsored by the Baltimore Aircoil Company, this project was to automate the process of blowdown in cooling towers. A cooling tower works by using evaporation, which eventually leads to increasing levels of minerals and other solids in the water that is cycling through the tower. When concentrated solids are not removed, they cause buildup on the tower, which then has to be shut down and cleaned periodically. Blowdown is the process by which water with a high concentration of solids is removed from the cooling tower. The students came up with three possible alternative methods of automating the blowdown mechanism, using only the power available from the incoming makeup water. Their cost was kept within prescribed boundaries, and they created models of each device that could be scaled to different-sized cooling towers. Students: Steve Lomnes (working for General

Project STAR (ShearThickening Armor Research)

This group of students was involved in a potentially revolutionary new concept in body armorceramic slurries. The Army Research Laboratory asked for help in creating a testing device that would give information on the shear rates of these slurries under impact. Such slurries are known to stiffen under rapid rates of loading, thus offering the possibility of remaining soft until impacted by a projectile. The students designed and built a loading mechanism, a spring-driven Testing Machine,

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Senior Design Projects

Electric Corp.), Rob Sola (now at Baltimore Aircoil Company), and Abby Winthrop (headed for MIT). the desired degrees of motion, radial motion and ellipticallization. Students: Thanh Lam (headed for the University of Pittsburgh), Bob Matarese (headed for Stanford University), and Mathan Shanmugham.

Project SHIPS (Sonar Hull Inspection Positioning System)

When roving underwater depths, exploring the ocean floor or inspecting the undersides of ships for damage, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) use sonar equipment as their eyes and ears. Because the ROV itself is difficult to tilt, it was only able to look in the fixed directions of its rigidly mounted sonar camera. The Naval Surface Warfare Center asked students to devise a remotely controlled robotic arm that could hold the sonar device and provide rotating and tilting capabilities to increase the view angles of sonar camera devices on ROVs. It had to have no more than a 2 Amp power supply, operate at 200 ft. below sea level, and meet strict size constraints. The students came up with an arm that met these requirements; it had two operating speeds, was waterproofed against sea water, was operable either with a joystick or on autopan (an automatic full scan in one plane). Students: Suhaila Ehr (now a reporter for TV3 in Malaysia), Katie Mangum (at the Naval Surface Warfare Center), and Brian McFadden.

Project JIMI (Jet Injection for Mass Inoculation)

Over 100 patents have been issued for various devices that jet-inject vaccines and other medications into the body without the use of needles. In fact, the technology is over 50 years old. Its a great idea; its quicker for mass inoculation applications, its safer, there is less long-term trauma and scarring at the injection site, its easy to perform, and jet injections are often just better at drug delivery than needles. But with current technology, the cost of injections is quite high, and splashback from the jet poses cross-contamination risks. Felton Medical Inc. sponsored a project to design a device that would test how well various different injectors are working (it would simulate skin) and to design a proof-of-principle device. In addition to testing several current injectors, the students in this group designed a needle-less injector that outperformed other current models, including a model developed in the previous years senior design class! Students: Matt Coggin, Meave Garigan (now at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City), and Jake Jenkins.

Project CHAP (Calibrated HARP Apparatus Phantom)

Researchers at Hopkins are developing a promising new, fast and, non-invasive method of measuring cardiac function using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, (MRI), known as HARPMRI (Harmonic-Phase MRI). JHUs Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST) asked ME students to come up with a phantom heart that could be used in the MRI scanner to calibrate this new method. The material had to be elastic, non-magnetic, nonconducting, and image successfully. This heart was supposed to undergo radial compression, torsion, longitudinal compression, and ellipticalization, all controlled by a remote operator, since no one is allowed in the MRI room during a scan. After playing around with various kinds of sticky gel substances, the students settled on a silicon-gel embedded with a meshlike netting to provide focus for the MRI calibrations. They were able to provide two of

Project SLIPP (SlipIntegrated Polymer Processing)

As part of the process of manufacturing nylon filters, nylon is heated and spun into long filaments that pass over an aluminum roller and onto the filter. Unfortunately, the rollers often overheat, causing the nylon to melt and adhere to the roller instead of passing on to the filter, causing a big sticky mess. Two ME students were asked by a filter manufacturer to come up with a method to cool the rollers. Their design had to fit into the current roller configuration, be simple and cheap to operate, and reduce current operating costs. Their requirementto deliver one complete roller system to the company. The students came up with a new roller design that incorporated a cooling system, and delivered their filter. Students: Moon Hwang and Sam Martin.

When roving underwater depths, exploring the ocean floor or inspecting the undersides of ships for damage, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) use sonar equipment as their eyes and ears. (project SHIPS)
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Awards and honors

wo new faculty have joined the Department: Assistant Professors Allison Okamura, in the area of robotics and haptics, and Jean-Franois Molinari, in the area of computational solid mechanics. Kevin Hemker was promoted to professor, Spring 2001. Also, he has been awarded the 2001 Materials Science Research Silver Medal from ASM International. Bill Sharpe has received the B. J. Lazan Award from the Society for Experimental MechanicsIn recognition of his outstanding original contributions to experimental mechanics on the microscale. Louis Whitcomb is the recipient of the prestigious 2001 Johns Hopkins University Student Council Award for Teaching. He became associate professor, July 2000. Also, he was appointed associate editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. Eight New Pi Tau Sigma Members were initiated on May 8, 2001: Tyler Tom, Angus Shee, Brian Weibeler, Daniel Olson, Abigail Winthrop, Robert Matarese, Rory Thomas, and Michael Cordeiro. Shiyi Chen became associate editor for Journal of Computational Physics. Gregory Chirikjian was promoted to professor, Spring 2001. Also, he became associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. Joe Katz has become the technical editor for the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering, and has been named to the Whiting School Mechanical Engineering Professorship (chaired). Andrea Prosperetti was elected foreign member, Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of The Netherlands, and to the governing board of the International Conference on Multiphase Flow. Dean Ilene Busch-Vishniac will be receiving the Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America. Associate Dean Andrew Douglas has won the years Wendell Dunn Award, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Student

Council, for his commitment to improving students lives at Hopkins and admirable and impacting leadership. Omar Knio was promoted to the rank of professor, Spring 2001. Charles Meneveau was appointed associate editor for Physics of Fluids and served as guest editor of Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. Department chair K.T. Ramesh was elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is serving as chair of the AMD Technical Committee on Dynamic Response of Materials. Former Ph.D. student Dr. Kausik Sarkar will become assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at University of Delaware in September 2001. Recent Ph.D. graduate Dr. Bo Tao will join the faculty of Civil Engineering of Purdue University as assistant professor in September 2001. Former Ph.D. student Dr. Alberto Scotti has joined Marine Sciences Department of the University of North Carolina as assistant professor. Ph.D. graduate Darren Hitt, currently on the faculty of the University of Vermont, received a CAREER award and an NSF Major Research Instrumentation Grant for microscale fabrication facility. The Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems (CAMCS) has been awarded a grant from the Army, Director is K.T. Ramesh. Former postdoctoral researcher Carl Boehlert will join the faculty of Materials Science at Alfred University as an assistant professor, in September 2001. Former postdoc Zeliang Xie will become assistant professor in the School of Materials Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in September 2001. Ph.D. graduate Imme Ebert-Uphoff, currently on the faculty of Georgia Tech, received a Career Award from the NSF and the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Endowment Naming Opportunities

The educational and research excellence of the Department of Mechanical Engineering can be significantly enhanced by increasing and strengthening its financial resources. The contributions of individuals and corporations can be permanently recognized through the following programs: Named Professorship Named Teaching Assistant Award Named Graduate Student Fellowship Naming the Department of Mechanical Engineering To learn more about how you may support the priorities of the Department of Mechanical Engineering through endowment Gift opportunities, please contact the Office of Development and Alumni Relations at 410.516.8723. Industrial Partnerships: Corporations may also be interested in the Industrial Partnerships with the Mechanical Engineering Department. For details, please contact the Department Chair, Dr. K.T. Ramesh at 410.516.7735.

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Society of Scholars
The Society of Scholars was created to honor the significant accomplishments of men and women who spent part of their careers at Johns Hopkins.

o honor the significant accomplishments of men and women who spent part of their careers at Johns Hopkins, the Society of Scholars was created by the board of trustees in May 1967 on the recommendation of former president Milton S. Eisenhower. The societythe first of its kind in the nationinducts former postdoctoral fellows and junior or visiting faculty at Johns Hopkins who have gained marked distinction in their fields of physical, biological, medical, social or engineering sciences or in the humanities and for whom at least five years have elapsed since their last Hopkins affiliation. Two of the 15 scholars elected in 2001 were former members of the Department of Mechanics at JHU, (now Mechanical Engineering), and one, Wolfgang Kollman, was elected in absentia in 2000 and was able to join us this year for the induction ceremony, held May 23 at the Evergreen House. Ron F. Blackwelder, professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern California. At Hopkins: Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanics, May to September 1970. Nominated by Andrea Prosperetti. Ron Blackwelder has made seminal contri-

butions in the areas of turbulence, flow stability, drag reduction, and instrumentation. Michael A. Hayes, professor of mathematical physics in the Department of Mathematical Physics, University College Dublin. At Hopkins: Postdoctoral fellow in the Mechanics Department, 196162. Nominated by Marc Parlange. A professor in the Department of Mathematical Physics at University College Dublin, Michael Hayes has done pioneering work in all areas of mechanics. In particular, wave propagation in materials, deformation of materials and fluid mechanics. Wolfgang Kollmann, professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Davis. At Hopkins: Fellow in the Department of Mechanics and Materials Science, 197375. Nominated by Marc Parlange and Charles Meneveau. Recognized as a world leader in the study of turbulence, turbulent combustion, and numerical simulation of turbulent flows, Wolfgang Kollmann has over the past 25 years advanced the state of the art in the solution of important engineering problems associated with complex flows.

Big smiles after the induction ceremony for new Society of Scholars members, held at the Evergreen House on May 23, 2001 (L to R): Wolfgang Kollmann, Eleanor Kollman, Colette Hayes, Prof. Grace Brush, Michael Hayes, Prof. Andrea Prosperetti, Prof. Marc Parlange, May Knio, Mary Parlange, Prof. Omar Knio, Judy Blackwelder, Ron Blackwelder, Brigitte Meneveau, Prof. Charles Meneveau

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