P=VI...right?

Much of my work lately has been building new things in the lab, we are adding some tests to our arsenal, one of my projects has been to wire a temperature controlling system for a heater. This required using a solid state relay to control the heater. The reason the relay had to be solid state, is that mechanical relays are very limited in speed, and they wear our faster over time. The SSR is controled by a DC current provided by the temperature controlling computer, but this entire system had to be wired together for others to use. This included fuses, switches and a safe box to keep the wires protected. The included photo is of a mostly-complete controller. I still need to add a master switch for the AC circuit.

Way to Plant!

For the last 3 days I have been working in the field at a hot-mix plant in New Britain, CT. We are gathering samples of the state's first Warm-Mix project being placed on Rt. 70 in Merriden, CT. The plant is a double-barrel batch plant with 9 silos for storing mix. They have 3 heated tanks for storing binder and a large aggregate cold-batch operation for the plant. I had the privilege of getting a tour of most of their facility on the 1st day I was there and it was a spectacular operation.
In this photo you can see the back 3 silos, (3, 6 and 9) with the mix distribution system on the top of them. The control tower in the foreground of the photo has 2 workers controlling the mixing, storage and dispersement operations for the plant. To the right of the photo, not pictured, is the quality assurance lab, where I met many friendly employees and state QA people as well where we were all testing samples and comparing numbers.
Later in the year I suspect I will be doing more with the 1+ tons of asphalt pavement we sampled.... stay tuned.

I saw a saw

New Equipment in the CAP lab! Today I set up a tile saw to be used to prepare specimens for our hydrostatic load frame. This tile saw will compliment the larger table saw we recently acquired for accurate cutting of specimens.

Today I also worked with my advisor to establish a research plan for a study I am jumping in on. This will entail much lab work which I will keep up to date on this site. Otherwise classes are coming to an end tomorrow and finals will take place next week. I will be working more in the lab next week through June, so there will be many posts to come. Its been a while since I had posted, so I figured it was time for an update.

Poster Child

Frontiers, the undergraduate research exhibition took place today (and will continue tomorrow.) This is an opportunity for students to showcase their work beyond the classroom at the University of Connecticut. My poster illustrated the work I had done on the AAPT database I created last fall and the up-to-date progress on the LTPP data analysis project. I would like to be present tomorrow at the fair, because it is open house on campus and a lot of prospective students and their families will be coming through- it would be nice to impress all of them, haha. Not too many people were at the exhibit today- I know, surprising for a Friday afternoon. I won't be able to attend tomorrow because I will be taking the F.E. exam.
This poster was actually helpful for me because it encouraged me to work harder to get progress on the LTPP data analysis of which I hadn't been focusing on previously. With classes, teaching and other research it understandably got moved to the back burner. The picture included is me next to my poster.

NASA's Finest Hour

Yesterday, 4/15, engineers from Hamilton Corporation came to campus to give a talk about their role during the Apollo 13 crisis. The company was responsible for the life support systems for the LEM and also for the extra-vehicular suits the astronauts had to wear. They spoke about contingency planning and how their team worked in shifts to get solutions to Grumman (The principle designers of the LEM) and NASA. The image shown with this post is the test unit of the life support system for the LEM. This particular one was used to test the retrofit of the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters onto the circular port for the LEM LiOH canisters. Two of the speakers actually worked on the troubleshooting during the Apollo 13 mission and one of the speakers was in a support room at mission control in Huston for Apollo 11.

Of Light and Binders

Today, working with the Doctoral student, we turned on the Fluorescent microscope and viewed several polymer-modified binders to see if we could identify them interacting with the binder. We were using the RT camera system which was wired into the computer last week, and things seemed to function quite well. As the doctoral student put it, "Our tools are typically shovels and hammers, we aren't used to microscopes." It will take a few more tries to get good images, and verify what we are viewing. But our preliminary tests today indicated that we could see what we wanted and with depth we hadn't anticipated.

Another breakthrough today on the mysql front with data analysis- I am able to filter my queries to eliminate duplicate data, I had to verify the mysql release number and download the right manual- I was using 5.1 previously and getting errors when I attempted to query using commands like select * distinct. Now I know to use a group by and specify the table and column afterwards. Much of the evening was spent studying for my F.E. /EIT exam... its coming up this Saturday.

Colchester Site Investigation

Today, for my senior design (capstone) project, I went to Colchester, CT. My group is finishing a feasibility study for a wind turbine installation to the west of the town transfer station and landfill. Work today was to identify and assess the condition of an access road which leads behind the landfill.

After speaking with the Transfer Station attendant, a closer look at our plans and a little investigation it was apparent that the road we were proposing to improve and utilize is on private property (I did not trespass to identify the roadway, it was further from the transfer station than expected, and clearly labeled as private property.)
This means our cost estimates and site plan will have to be modified to reflect a new roadway construction for crane access to the proposed site. The good news it that the trees appear to be small alders mixed with larger oaks, which means we might have grubbing pay for itself.

It was a beautiful day to be out and from the top of the landfill it was a great view (See adjacent photo.) This is a South-Westerly view from the top of the capped landfill. The proposed site for the turbine would be about two hundred feet into the woods on the left of the photo.