University at Buffalo: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

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Research at a Glance

Bioengineering

In an overall sense, bioengineering is the use of engineering principles to solve problems in medicine and biology. Bioengineering as found in mechanical and aerospace engineering has research and teaching programs that focus primarily on musculoskeletal and orthopedic biomechanics, cardiovascular biomechanics, biomaterials, simulation and computation of biological processes, and medical imaging. There are collaborative efforts with the Departments of Biomaterials, Orthopaedic Surgery, and Emergency Medicine.

• Hemodynamics and vascular biomechanics

• Biomaterials, medical devices, and implants

• Musculoskeletal biomechanics

• Musculoskeletal simulation

• Biomedical simulation and visualization

Design and Optimization

Our design research focuses on the design of components, mechanisms, products, and systems, and on the issues inherent in designing, prototyping, and manufacturing them. These issues range from component and assembly modeling in the design of machines and robotic manipulators and biomedical systems, to developing Internet-based decision support tools in collaborative product design. The work of this group can be broadly categorized as:

• Scientific visualization

• Optimization in design

• Virtual reality/haptics

• Design theory

• Mechatronics

Dynamics, control, and mechatronics

The focus of this group is on modeling, identification, and control development and validation of a variety of electromechanical, biomedical, and other systems applications. The group is involved in research of advanced control, estimation, distributed cooperating systems, robust vibration control, virtual reality-based simulation and testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, etc. This activity can be broadly categorized into:

• Robotics/Mechatronics

• Transportation

• Guidance, navigation and control

• Virtual reality/Haptics

Fluids and Thermal Sciences

This area includes fluid mechanics, combustion, heat and mass transfer, special environments, propulsion, bioengineering, aerosol mechanics, instrumentation, electrodynamics of fluids, and computational fluid dynamics. Fundamental research efforts in this area address turbulent flows, combustion, aerosol mechanics, particulate light scattering, flame-vortex interaction, hemodynamics, thermodynamic and transport properties of novel materials and anomalous phenomena, computational methods, flow diagnostics, and microscale fluid mechanics. Applied research here deals with energy conversion, thermal/chemical/mechanical modeling of complex systems, pollution control, biomedical devices, inhalation toxicology, drug therapy, direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large eddy simulation (LES) of complex combustion systems, multi-recompression heater, design of a total body thermal protection garment, and pathophysiology of blood flow that leads to heart attacks and strokes.

• Advanced laser flow diagnostics

• Combustion

• Computational fluid dynamics

• Thermal/Chemical/Mechanical systems modeling

• Particulate light scattering

• Theoretical fluid dynamics

• Experimental Fluid Mechanics

Mechanics and materials

The application of materials science and engineering is arguably one of the most important engineering disciplines; simply put, without materials, there is no engineering. Research in materials is grounded in a fundamental understanding of why a material displays a given electronic, physical, mechanical, or chemical property or behavior, thus permitting "structure-property" relationships and predictions. Materials research involves fabrication of new materials as well as improvement of existing materials; if includes electronic materials, biomaterials, metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites.

Mechanics research in MAE has a strong point in the application of numerical methods to solving problems of solids, structures, and biomechanics; this includes composite materials as well as viscoelastic and biomaterials. Research focuses on proposing and validating constitutive models as well as on finding efficient computational schemes to complete the solution. In addition, there is an emphasis on experimental mechanics to study the mechanics of materials. This effort is aided by advances in experimental techniques and emphasizes the scientific importance of experimental observations.