This is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award to support early-career faculty to become role models in integrating outstanding research and educational objectives to advance the mission of their departments.

Osteoarthritis afflicts nearly 20% of the US population; costs over $185.5BN a year (2007); and causes pain, functional limitations, lost earnings and depression – yet we understand neither its cause nor progression. Researchers have extensively characterized microcracks in bone and sub-millimeter-scale fissures in osteoarthritis, but Dr. Pierce’s lab recently discovered that impact usually considered non-injurious in fact causes micrometer-scale cracks in collagen of human cartilage. These microcracks may lead to pre-clinical osteoarthritis, but the extent to which they grow under repetitive loads during normal daily activities is unknown.

Prof. Pierce’s project, titled “Understanding Collagen Microcracks in Soft Tissues Under Normal Body Loads,” proposed to perform fundamental research to understand growth of collagen microcracks in soft tissues by validating novel computer simulations with new experimental data. Understanding and modeling cartilage microcracks will likely lead to new therapies and/or lifestyle modification strategies for osteoarthritis patients. The research will not only investigate the characterization of one of the earliest observable signs of deterioration likely related to osteoarthritis, but also facilitate studies of other tissues and engineering materials.

UConn assistant professor Julian Norato is part of an exclusive group pf 34 scientists nationwide that have been selected to receive The Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, which supports early career academic scientists and engineers that “show exceptional promise for doing creative research.”

Prof. Norato’s project, titled “Computational Synthesis of Composable-Material Structures from Manufacturing-Friendly Primitives”, will advance topology optimization methods for the design of structures made with composite materials with consideration for their manufacturing.   Topology optimization is a computational technique that determines the optimal distribution of material within a given space to, for example, design the lightest structure that will not mechanically fail under applied loads. Existing topology optimization methods excel at exploring designs made of homogeneous, isotropic materials—that is, materials that have uniform, direction-independent properties throughout the structure.  However, there is a substantial need to advance topology optimization techniques that render designs that are made of heterogeneous, anisotropic materials, such as composite materials, and that take into consideration the geometric requirements of existing composite manufacturing processes.  By exploring designs that take advantage of the unique properties of composite materials and that can be more readily translated to fabrication, the techniques advanced by this project have the potential to render significant weight savings and improve the mission performance of Naval aircraft and ship structures.

Prof. Norato leads UConn’s Structural Optimization Laboratory where he and his graduate students develop computational state-of-the-art computational approaches to:

• Incorporate realistic failure mode criteria
• Render designs that are cost-effective and/or close-to-fabrication for a given manufacturing process
• Simultaneously consider the design of a structure and a material system

These capabilities will expand the role of computational design of structures and material systems in the early concept design and advance our ability to push the limits of physical performance (including multifunctional systems), lightweight, and cost effectiveness beyond what is possible today.

Prof. Jiong Tang is honored with the Distinguished Engineer of the Year Award presented by the ASME Hartford Section during 2017 Annual Engineer’s Night Awards Banquet.

From left: Profs. Xu Chen, Horea Ilies, ZhanZhan Jia, Xinyu Zhao, Jiong Tang, Vito Moreno, Dianyun Zhang, Thanh Nguyen, Abhishek Dutta.

On March 11th 2017, Prof. Dianyun Zhang, graduate student Weijia Chen, and senior Mechanical Engineering students Meagan Ferreira and Nomin Munkhbat attended the “Women Take Flight” event hosted by the New England Air Museum located in Windsor Locks, CT. The event featured activities and presentations celebrating women’s contributions to aerospace history and technology.

Dr. Zhang represented UConn’s Mechanical Engineering department at the event to promote engineering to young children by showing new advancements. Specifically, the group demonstrated how composites are manufactured to the young boys and girls (as well as adults) who attended the event. Curious guests were shown that carbon fiber and the glass fiber are flexible and soft. Then they were asked if they could assess the composite panels, and if they believed they were made from those same materials. Guests were then told about the VARTM (vacuum assisted resin transfer molding) process, and exactly how those flexible fibers can become as tough as metal through curing. It was also explained how the composites are replacing airplane parts that generally use metal. (Contributed by Nomin Munkhbat and Meagan Ferreira)

The project entitled “Efficient Radiative Heat Transfer Modeling in Large-Scale Combustion Systems” will optimize the a legacy radiative heat transfer code from Prof. Zhao’s lab on the Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing processors. Currently Prof. Zhao is working with a graduate student (Peiyu Zhang) and an undergraduate student (Andrew Caratenuto) on test problems that are representative of the full-scale problems. Significant speedup has already been observed on knights landing using these test problems.

Prof. Julian Norato is developing computational techniques for welded plate structures in conjunction with Caterpillar, Inc. These techniques can be a powerful design tool to explore the design of structures from a blank sheet.

Dr. Norato with his student Shanglong Zhang, with funding from Caterpillar, are developing computational techniques for the design of structures made of welded plates, such as those encountered in large structures for heavy machinery and ship structures.

Their work is focused on topology optimization — a computational technique that determines the optimal spatial distribution of material within a space envelope to, for example, design the lightest structure that will not mechanically fail under applied loads.  This technique is a powerful engineering design tool to explore the design of structures starting from a blank sheet. Existing topology optimization techniques produce complex, organic designs that cannot be readily fabricated by welding plates.  In order to be most economical, this current process in many cases results in the production of large, strong structures typically made of steel. This is the case with the main structures of heavy machinery and ships.  Dr. Norato’s topology optimization method renders designs that are made exclusively of constant-thickness plates which can be welded, which greatly facilitates the translation of the topology optimization result to a design concept of the structure that is amenable to fabrication.

Prof. Xu Chen is the recipient of the UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering’s Breakthrough Award, which recognizes innovative, transformational and disruptive contributions in the field of advanced systems engineering. Read more here.