Blog
Articles by NRG
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The Women of Fluid Mechanics
Happy International Women’s Day!
In honor of all the women across the world, we’d like the share a recent article one of our students, Courtney Otani, wrote for the American Physical Society. Sharing her experience as a woman in engineering, Otani writes about her time attending the 2019 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) and her engineering career. While engineering and STEM currently remains heavily male dominant, we’d like to applause all the women who previously worked or are currently working hard to seek equal recognition.
Otani’s full article can be read here.
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AeroSpec Selected for UW’s Jones + Foster Accelerator
The winner of past startup competitions, AeroSpec, has now been selected as one of the recipients of the Jones + Foster Accelerator program. Guided by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, AeroSpec will receive up to $25,000 after they completing six months of milestones under the mentorship of industry leaders from across the community. The J+F Accelerator has now awarded more than $1.4 million since the program began in 2010.
AeroSpec provides a complete air quality monitoring system for the industrial segment using off-the-shelf electronics and proprietary software to create a real time air quality heat map of an indoor facility. “AeroSpec started the program with many possible directions,” said CEO Sep Makhsous. “Now we have a focused 3-year plan with clear goals and milestones to achieve.” AeroSpec is scheduled to officially launch in January 2021.
More information can be found at UW’s Foster Blog. If you are interested in joining AeroSpec, please reach out to Sep.
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NRG Explores Electrohydrodynamic Flow in 2019
2019 proves to be a strong year for NRG’s research in electrohydrodynamic flow. Electrohydrodynamics (EHD) involves the study of plasma actuators to generate plasma that can then be controlled with the application of an external flow, and in the past year NRG has produced 10 articles involving analytical, experimental, and numerical investigations of EHD. From conference appearances to journal publications, NRG hopes to continue push the boundaries of EHD. Related articles can be found here:
- Novosselov, I.; Aliseda, A.; Riley, J.; Guan, Y., Study of Laminar Electrohydrodynamic Flows. Novosselov, I.; Aliseda, A.; Riley, J., Eds. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing: 2019.
- Vaddi, R. S.; Guan, Y.; Novosselov, I., Particle Dynamics in Corona Induced Electro-hydrodynamic Flow. 2019.
- Vaddi, R. S.; Guan, Y.; Chen, Z. Y.; Mamishev, A.; Novosselov, I., Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Corona Discharge Induced Flow on a Flat Plate. 2019.
- Prasad, H. K. H.; Vaddi, R. S.; Chukewad, Y. M.; Dedic, E.; Novosselov, I.; Fuller, S. B., A laser-microfabricated electrohydrodynamic thruster for centimeter-scale aerial robots. 2019.
- Guan, Y.; Vaddi, R. S.; Aliseda, A.; Novosselov, I., Comparison of Analytical and Numerical Models for Point to Ring Electro-Hydrodynamic Flow. 2019
- Guan, Y.; Riley, J.; Novosselov, I., Three-dimensional Electro-convective Vortices in Cross-flow. 2019.
- Vaddi, R. S.; Novosselov, I., Analytical Model for Electrohydrodynamic Thrust. Bulletin of the American Physical Society 2019.
- Fillingham, P.; Guan, Y.; Sankar Vadi, R.; Novosselov, I., Numerical, Experimental and Analytical Investigation of the Planar Electrohydrodynamic Wall Jet. Bulletin of the American Physical Society 2019, 64.
- Guan, Y.; Novosselov, I., Two relaxation time lattice Boltzmann method coupled to fast Fourier transform Poisson solver: Application to electroconvective flow. Journal of Computational Physics 2019, 397.
- Guan, Y.; Riley, J.; Novosselov, I., Numerical analysis of 2D and 3D electrohydrodynamic convection instability with crossflow. Bulletin of the American Physical Society 2019.
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NRG Students Present at 2019 American Physical Society
Numerous NRG students, including Justin Davis, Yifei Guan, Patrick Fillingham, Ravi Vaddi, James Riley, Courtney Otani, and Elizabeth Rasmussen presented at this year’s 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics held in Seattle, WA. Our research presentations range from electrohydrodynamic, particle science, combustion, and much more. Click on each student’s name to see more about their research.
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AN ITTY-BITTY ROBOT THAT LIFTS OFF LIKE A SCI-FI SPACESHIP
Our recently published work (collaboration with Autonomous Insect Robotics Lab) featured in wired magazine.
From the article:
You may have heard of ion propulsion in the context of spacecraft, but this application is a bit different. Most solar-powered ion spacecraft bombard xenon atoms with electrons, producing positively charged xenon ions that then rush toward a negatively charged grid, which accelerates the ions into space. The resulting thrust is piddling compared to traditional engines, and that’s OK—the spacecraft is floating through the vacuum of space, so the shower of ions accelerate the aircraft bit by bit.
A robot here on Earth, though, has air molecules at its disposal, so it doesn’t have to bother with xenon. In this case (known as electrohydrodynamic thrust), electricity flows into what is essentially a tiny comb made of a conductive metal. Each super-sharp tine throws off ions, which are attracted to a carbon fiber “collector” grid situated below.
“On the way from Point A to Point B, they have multiple collisions with neutral molecules, which is air—nitrogen, oxygen, a little bit of CO2 and water,” says University of Washington mechanical engineer Igor Novosselov, coauthor of a recent preprint paper detailing his team’s system. “So what happens is that these ions accelerate the air toward the ground, providing the thrust.”
Easy, right? No xenon to futz with or wings to flap or rotors to spin. But the reality is, ion propulsion comes with a host of problems that roboticists are just beginning to wrestle with.
One is power. It takes a lot of juice to produce enough ions to generate thrust, so much so that Novosselov and his colleagues have to tether their robot to a power source. Think of their machine like four separate ion thrusters stuck together, in total measuring an inch long. The idea with having four is that you could modulate the power for each, allowing the flier to steer like a quadcopter does.
But that’s a ways off, because for now the machine can produce only a bit more thrust than it needs to get off the ground. That’s not enough to carry the battery and sensors and other electronics that would make steering and sustained flight possible. (As you can see below, a single tethered thruster subscribes to the chaos method of powered flight.) It’s not even as powerful as the previous UC Berkeley ion thruster it was modeled on.