During long term space missions, it is necessary to have a reliable source of energy. Solar cells are an easy and reliable way to convert energy from the sun to electrical energy. NASA has used solar cells manufactured on Earth as an energy source for many of its missions. In order to develop technologies that will enable high efficiency solar cell...
The flow profiles of pressure-driven and electro-kinetic driven flows were compared for a microfluidic chip. It was found that the pressure-driven flow had a parabolic profile while the electro-kinetic flow had a plug shaped flow profile. The measured velocities were similar to those determined by the Poiseuille flow model and the Helmholtz-Smoltch...
The purpose of this project is to determine if over-aging of aluminum causes the yield or tensile strength to fall below the minimum strength values set by the aluminum industry. Extruded aluminum alloys, 6061-T6, 6063-T6, and two proprietary alloys, HS6X-T6 and RX82-T6, were exposed to reheating treatments at extended times and temperatures. The t...
A stress, ranging from 104.17 to 166.67 psi, was applied to 0.5 in diameter cylindrical samples of 7050 aluminum using a manufactured fixture that applies stress using an indenter with a diameter of 0.127 in. The stress range used replicates the stresses produced on large scale forgings weighing up to 4000 lbs. We chose a maximum, medium and low st...
A testing protocol was established for measuring the flexure properties of thin-walled tubes constructed of a composite mixture of glass and carbon fibers and epoxy resin for use in Fly Fishing rods. Standard three point bend tests were conducted in accordance with ASTM standard D7329-13 with a span length of six inches. All samples were of the sam...
Advanced Materials is one of the Key Enabling 3 Technologies identified by the European Commission1. Together with Advanced Manufacturing it underpins almost all other Key Enabling and Industrial Technologies. The basic science and engineering research that results in the development of Advanced Materials lies within the field of Materials Science ...
Solid materials can now be viewed non-destructively with x-rays by tomography; a technique for taking many 2D images of an object at many angles and reconstructing the images into a 3D data cube. The data is next rendered into 2D or 3D still images or movies. By nature, x-ray tomography yields a very large amount of data in three dimensions. Effect...
The purpose of this study was two-fold: develop an aging curve for extruded 2195 aluminum and test the magnitude of the anisotropy in the extrusion throughout the aging process. Two aging curves were developed, one at 290oF and the other at 320oF, through hardness tests of aged samples. The hardness was found to change, from approximately 72 HRB to...
