Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 1 No. 4 | Page 7

departmental news
Tian selected
as Scholar of
the Week

From left, Justin Bailey, mechanical engineering doctoral student and research assistant
in the Turbolab; Todd Lowe, associate professor of aerospace and ocean engineering and
assistant director of the Turbolab; John Gillespie, project engineer in the Turbolab; and
Walter O'Brien, the J. Bernard Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of
the Turbolab, with one of the two Honeywell 12-to-14-passenger jet aircraft engines.

Honeywell donates two aircraft engines
worth nearly $1.5 million to Turbolab
Honeywell International has donated two turbofan aircraft engines
commonly found on the Learjet 31,
Cessna Citation III, and Dassault
Falcon 900, allowing Virginia Tech
students and faculty to pursue
exclusive research and experience
valuable hands-on learning.
Through instrumentation techniques developed by researchers
in the TurboLab, the Honeywell
TFE731-2 jet engines, worth approximately $1.5 million, will be used to
develop new aerodynamic technologies, targeting Honeywell’s strategic
areas of discovery that could impact
manufacturing of engines for commercial and military aircraft.
“We are grateful for industry partners like Honeywell. Because of their

generous donation, our students
and faculty are able to conduct cutting-edge propulsion research that
is entirely exclusive,” said Walter
O’Brien, the J. Bernard Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and
director of the TurboLab. “Together
with Honeywell, through innovative
research, we are able to educate the
best and the brightest engineers,
innovators, and scientists while advancing technology and addressing
critical aeronautical challenges.”
Next-generation commercial
airframes produce distorted airflows
that compromise engine performance. Researchers will use the
engines to measure their response
to distorted inflows.
Read the whole story at VTNews.

The
Office of
the Vice
President
for Research
and Innovation recTian
ognized
Zhiting
Tian, assistant professor of
mechanical engineering,
as Scholar of the week
for her investigations of
nanoscale energy transport
processes and their potential
applications.
Tian and her ZT Group study
nanoscale thermal transport
properties in semiconductors,
polymers, hybrid composites,
and novel low-dimensional
materials.
Tian's current projects
include enhancing crossplane thermal conductivity of
polymer-based thin films, and
nano-engineered thermoelectric systems for portable
power sources.
Tian earned her Ph.D. in
from MIT and was awarded
an NSF ASSIST travel grant to
attend the Academic Leadership in Women Engineering
Program of the Society of
Women Engineers in 2016.
She also received the 2016
Undergraduate Research
Advisor Award for the College
of Engineering.