rication Symposium. Her research interests center around the development and assessment of students' spatial visualization skills, the effective integration of 3D modeling into engineering design, and the impact of contextualized hands-on applications on student learning and success. She has taught Engineering Graphics, Introduction to Engineering Design, Automation and Rapid Prototyping, Additive Manufacturing, and has developed several advanced applications of 3D modeling courses. Dr. Steinhauer received her B.S. in Aircraft Engineering and her M.S. in Systems Engineering, and her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech.

Vehicle aerodynamics plays an important role in reducing fuel consumption. The underbody contributes to around 50% of the overall drag of a vehicle. As part of the underbody, the wheels and wheelhouses contribute to approximately 25-30% of the overall drag of a vehicle. As a result, wheel aerodynamics studies have been gaining popularity. However, a consensus of an appropriate turbulence model has not been reached, partially due to the lack of experiments appropriate for turbulence model validation studies for this type of flow. Seven turbulence models were used to simulate the flow within the wheelhouse of a simplified vehicle body, and results were shown to be incongruous with commonly used experimental data. The performance of each model was evaluated by comparing the aerodynamic coefficients obtained using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to data collected from the Fabijanic wind tunnel experiments. The various turbulence models generally agreed with each other when determining average values, such a mean drag and lift coefficients, even if the particular values did not fall within the uncertainty of the experiment; however, they exhibited differences in the level of resolution in the flow structures within the wheelhouse. These flow structures are not able to be validated with currently available experimental data. Properly resolving flow structures is important when implementing flow control devices to reduce drag. Results from this study emphasize the need for spatially and time-resolved experiments, especially for validating LES and DES for flow within a wheelhouse.

Numerical simulations of flow modification devices on a simplified ground vehicle are conducted. A parametric study on the size and distance upstream of conventional wheel deflectors is conducted on a simplified body at a Reynolds number of 1.6 × 105 to observe the impact on drag coefficient. Results show that wheel drag is decreased as the height of the conventional wheel deflector is increased. Additionally, the further the conventional wheel deflector is from the wheelhouse, the more sensitive the wheel is to changes in drag coefficient. The conventional wheel deflectors are then replaced by air-jets which are used to manipulate the flow field in and near the wheelhouse to reduce the wheel drag of the simplified body. The air-jet successfully decreases the wheel drag and it is observed that the closer the air-jet is to the wheelhouse the less impact it has on the single wheel drag, but the greater the impact on the overall drag of the simplified body.

Phase-change materials (PCMs) are a useful alternative to more traditional methods of thermal management of Li-ion batteries in electric or hybrid-electric vehicles. PCMs are materials which absorb large amounts of latent heat and undergo solid-to-liquid phase change at near-constant temperature. The goal of the research is to experimentally investigate the thermal properties of a novel shape-stabilized PCM/HDPE composite extruded filament. The extruded filament can then be used in a 3D printer for custom PCM/HDPE shapes. The PCM used in the study is PureTemp PCM 42, which is an organic-based material that melts around 42° C. Four PCM/HDPE mixtures were investigated (all percentages by mass): 20/80, 30/70, 40/60, and 50/50. Preliminary findings include differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) measurements of melting temperature and latent heat as well as scanning electron microscope (SEM) pictures of filament composition.

Respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 can be spread through airborne transmission, which is highly dependent on the airflow pattern of the studied room. Indoor air is typically not perfectly mixed even using a mixing ventilation, especially in large spaces. Airflow patterns in large open spaces such as hotel banquet rooms and open plan offices, are of particular concern, as these spaces usually accommodate more occupants and thus have the potential to spread diseases more rapidly leading to outbreaks. Therefore, understanding airflow patterns in large open spaces can help to estimate the detailed infection risk at certain locations in the space, which can prevent the spread of virus and track the potential new infections. This study estimated airflow patterns in a typical banquet room under theatre and banquet scenarios, and a large open plan office using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Typical ventilation and air distribution approaches, as well as room layouts and occupant configurations in these scenarios were studied and applied in simulations. According to current results, the air distribution in a typical hotel banquet room with mixing ventilation can be very complicated, particularly for the banquet scenario. For a typical theatre scenario, under typical ventilation design, people sitting in the middle and lateral area were exposed to the highest infection risk. The front rows may be exposed to short-range transmission as well. For a banquet scenario, people sitting on the same table were more likely to be cross contaminated. But cross-table infection was still possible. The results can provide guidance on designing ventilation and air distribution approaches in large spaces with similar settings.