Industrial Cooperation and Creative Engineering based on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation
Eleven universities from Armenia, Austria, Georgia, Germany, Romania, Spain, and Ukraine are engaged in Tempus IV project entitled Industrial Cooperation and Creative Engineering based on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation, shortly – iCo-op. The goal of this international 3-year project, as it is stated in its program, is to “Empower university-enterprises partnership in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine by modernizing engineering education based on remote engineering and virtual instrumentation.”
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory Grant Completed
ERC has recently completed a research project for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The multi-year project required the design and prototyping of a laser-probe system that allows for real-time detection of defects in solar cells made from silicon wafers. The equipment can be used for quality control during the manufacturing process or as an instrument for researchers investigating the causes of defects in the crystalline material during the production process. Dr. Artak Hambarian, the Principal Investigator of the project, describes the feature of the device: “There is a precisely balanced high spin turntable (up to 4000 rpm) with a probe arm, accurate to 1 micrometer, that scans the surface of the silicon. We have also developed control and Graphical User Interface software. The apparatus has a data acquisition system and 3-channel laser probe.” NREL is currently testing the system with the aim of commercialization.
PROCESS AND SYSTEMS ANALYSIS: Multilayered Work on Lognormal Scheduling Conducted by AUA Faculty and Students
Drs. Lilit Mazmanyan (AUA) and Dan Trietsch (AUA) are collaborating on lognormal scheduling models with AUA graduate students as well as researchers in the U.S. These models resolve problems that make conventional scheduling theory impractical for real-life projects or systems that are subject to randomness. Part of their work, done with Lilit Gevorgyan (IESM ’08) and Dr. Ken Baker (Professor, Dartmouth College), has been recently published in a paper called “Modeling activity times by the Parkinson distribution with a lognormal core: Theory and validation,” European Journal of Operational Research 216 (2012), pp. 386-396. In this field, Mazmanyan and Trietsch have also guided two AUA College of Science and Engineering Master’s theses by Aram Keryan (IESM ’11) and David Tarkhanyan (IESM ’11). The theses deal with minimizing the effects of expected delays. Currently Drs. Mazmanyan and Trietsch are focusing on applications of lognormal scheduling in transportation. They study how to select the best route and due date for the minimization of fundamental safe scheduling objectives. In addition, Drs. Trietsch and Baker’s paper, “PERT 21: Fitting PERT/CPM for use in the 21st Century,” has recently been accepted for publication in International Journal of Project Management. PERT 21 applies lognormal scheduling to projects, replacing the traditional PERT stochastic analysis engine.
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING: Florida State University Wind Turbine 3D Modeling
Sargis Zeytunyan, the Director of the CoE’s CAD/CAM Lab, together with a team of students, using computer aided design and manufacturing software, developed a 3D model, drawings, and bill of material documents for a 25ft turbine for Keuka Wind, a private company, and Florida State University (FSU). Along with his FSU colleague, Dr.Rob Hovsapian, Mr. Zeytunyan is now supervising an international student project that will design a water desalination system and use these wind turbines in powering the system.