Department of Mechanical Engineering

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

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In this section

About
Undergraduate
Graduate
Faculty
Research
Resources
Senior Design Projects

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Video: Mechanical Engineering - making the world work better

Mechanical engineers design and develop everything you think of as a machine—from an artificial liver to power tools. We design:

everything that is mechanical—wheels and axles, airplane bodies, pumps, hard drives, heart-lung machines, and much more
systems that produce power and systems that consume power, such as refrigeration equipment, elevators, and loud-speakers
all the tools and processes necessary to make an infinite variety of products: from robots that assemble cars to methods for shaping metals and plastics

Mechanical engineering is an extremely broad field, extending from the technology to freeze living tissue to the exploration of ocean currents. Join us in this exciting, challenging, and rewarding profession.

Academic programs

BS in Mechanical Engineering
Manufacturing - Undergraduate Concentration
MS in Mechanical Engineering
Graduate Certificate in Industrial & Systems Engineering
PhD in Engineering & Applied Science
PhD in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology

Department News

News

PhD graduate Shabnam Mohammadshahi in Dr. Ling's lab

Newly minted PhDs receive prestigious post-doc, tenure-track faculty appointments

Two class of 2024 engineering PhD graduates are moving on to highly competitive postdoctoral research and tenure-track faculty positions

Hangjian Ling receives NSF CAREER award

The $505K award provides funding for research and student training in hydrodynamics and marine technology.

UMass Dartmouth signs first international accelerated MS degree agreement

International agreement will create an accelerated pathway for MS degree in mechanical engineering with an industrial and systems engineering option

Contact

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Science & Engineering Building, Room 116
UMass Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road
Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300

508-999-8492
508-999-8881
scunha@umassd.edu

Chairperson

Sankha Bhowmick, PhD

Professor / Chairperson
Mechanical Engineering
Textiles 208

508-999-8619
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Events

Jan

10:00AM

ELEC Oral Comprehensive Exam for Doctoral Candidacy by Muhammad Baqer Mollah - ECE

Topic: Multi-Modality Sensing and Communications for Connected Vehicles Location: Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A Zoom Conference Link: https://umassd.zoom.us/j/92374869463 Meeting ID: 923 7486 9463 Passcode: 174802 Abstract: Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are set to transform intelligent transportation systems by enhancing safety, traffic efficiency, and mobility. Key use cases require high throughput, low latency, reliable communication, and precise positioning. The millimeter-wave (mmWave) band offers a broad spectrum to meet these demands but suffers from high path attenuation, necessitating beamforming techniques that use large antenna arrays to create narrow beams for better signal strength. Traditional beam alignment methods based on exhaustive searching can result in significant computational and communication overhead, making them unsuitable for dynamic vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) scenarios. This proposal outlines background information, problem statements, and the challenges of deploying mmWave communications in CAV use cases. It includes two preliminary solutions that utilize deep learning techniques, leveraging single and multi-modality sensing data to predict optimal beams for strong mmWave links. Real-world testing indicates that these methods significantly reduce the beam searching time and overhead compared to conventional approaches, representing a promising advancement in mmWave communication. The proposal concludes with suggested future directions for research. Co-Advisor(s): Dr. Honggang Wang, Professor, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth; Dr. Hua Fang, Professor, Dept. of Computer & Information Science, UMASS Dartmouth Committee Members: Dr. Mohammad Karim, Professor, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth; Dr. Liudong Xing, Professor, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth; Dr. Qing Yang, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. *For further information, please contact Dr. Honggang Wang via email at hwang1@umassd.edu.

Science & Engineering Building, Lester W. Cory Conference Room: Room 213A

Jan

12:00PM

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Grand Reading Room

Jan

2:45PM

ELEC Research Component of PhD Qualifier Exam by Noah Oikarinen - ECE

Topic: A Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Colluding Attack Defense System Location: Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A Zoom Conference Link: https://umassd.zoom.us/j/99742168771 Meeting ID: 997 4216 8771 Passcode: 976327 Abstract: The voting-based replication mechanism is widely used as a fault-tolerant technique across various engineering and computing domains. However, this technique is vulnerable to colluding attacks where multiple malicious resources can collaborate to produce identical wrong results to potentially fail a task execution, posing significant threats to system integrity, performance, and reliability. This research introduces a heterogeneous multi-agent colluding attack defense system, a novel credibility-based framework designed to detect and mitigate the impact of coordinated adversarial behavior within diverse agent environments. The proposed framework employs a dual-role architecture, consisting primarily of spotter and resource agents. Spotters are responsible for monitoring and evaluating the credibility of resource agents based on their performance and voting patterns. Resource agents that fail the spotter's check are excluded from task execution. The system dynamically and optimally allocates these roles under users' predefined cost constraints, balancing resource utilization and defense efficiency. By strategically adjusting the credibility scores of resource agents, the proposed defense mechanism adapts to ensure sustained system performance and reliability. Experimental studies are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed heterogeneous multi-agent system in defending against colluding attacks in voting-based computing environments. The impacts of several key model parameters on the system reliability are also investigated. Co-Advisor(s): Dr. Liudong Xing, Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth; Dr. Lance Fiondella, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth Committee Members: Dr. Hong Liu, Commonwealth Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMASS Dartmouth; Dr. Jiawei Yuan, Associate Professor, Department of Computer & Information Science, UMASS Dartmouth NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. *For further information, please contact Dr. Liudong Xing via email at lxing@umassd.edu or Dr. Lance Fiondella via email at lfiondella@umassd.edu

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Feb

3:00PM

EAS Doctoral Proposal Defense by Parya Teymoory

Date: Monday, February 10, 2025 Time: 3pm Topic: Exploring Rheological Behavior and Interfacial Properties in Solid Polymer Electrolytes for Supercapacitor Location: SENG 110 Abstract: Solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) and their composites are promising candidates for energy storage applications, including flexible and structural supercapacitors and batteries, due to their safety, stability, and mechanical robustness. However, their limited processability and low interfacial capacitance compared to liquid electrolytes present significant challenges for large-scale implementation. This study aims to address these limitations by investigating the rheological behavior, interfacial properties in SPEs. The processability, of SPE composites with various filers and salt which can be evaluated through rheology tests. This study evaluates how these factors influence the flow and deformation of SPEs under various shear rates and temperatures near and above their melting points. The insights gained will improve the processability of SPEs, enabling their integration into scalable manufacturing techniques like thermal drawing and injection molding. The interfacial capacitance of SPE is less understood in the literature. The mechanisms leading to lower capacitance with SPE compared to liquid electrolyte are still unclear. Experiments will investigate how polymer molecular structures affect the electric double layer (EDL) and capacitance at the SPE-electrode interface. By melting SPEs above their melting point to achieve smooth contact with planar electrodes, this work examines how crystalline and amorphous regions of polymers impact charging dynamics and the equilibrium EDL structure. Additionally, this research explores the role of effective contact area between SPEs and flat electrodes. The relationship between viscoelastic behavior, such as viscosity, and interfacial properties like wetting, adhesion, and surface roughness and energy will be examined. By correlating these properties, the study seeks to establish a framework for designing SPEs with enhanced wettability, adhesion, and interfacial performance. By bridging these knowledge gaps, this study seeks to advance the development of SPEs with enhanced performance and scalability for next-generation energy storage devices. ADVISOR(S): Dr. Caiwei Shen, Department of Mechanical Engineering (cshen2@umassd.edu) COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Maricris Mayes, Department of Chemistry/Biochemistry Dr. Vijaya Chalivendra, Department of Mechanical Engineering Dr. Hangjian Ling, Department of Mechanical Engineering NOTE: All EAS Students are ENCOURAGED to attend.

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Feb

2:00PM

EAS Doctoral Dissertation Defense by Seyedmohammad Mousavisani

Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 Time: 2pm Topic: Experimental Study of Fluid-Induced Vibration of Asymmetric Flexible Structures Location: SENG 110 Abstract: Flow-induced vibrations (FIV) can occur when a flexible or flexibly mounted bluff body is exposed to fluid flow. As the flow passes the structure, the shed vortices downstream of the body can produce fluctuating forces on the structure, causing large-amplitude oscillations. FIV is known as a destructive phenomenon causing fatigue damage to engineering structures. Over the past few decades, numerous studies have been conducted on the FIV of a circular cylinder as a canonical geometry. The FIV response of a bluff body is highly sensitive to its cross-sectional geometry as the location of the separation point, which is intricately linked to the vortex-shedding mechanism, is different for each geometry. Previous studies on the FIV of structures with non-circular and asymmetric cross-sections have mainly focused on the flexibly-mounted rigid bodies in flow. However, to fully understand the complex dynamic response of the system in many real-life applications where the structure has a non-circular cross-section, such as iced-covered electrical transmission lines, decks of suspension bridges, tension chains, and the riser that become asymmetric due to corrosion in the water, the structure's spanwise flexibility should be considered. This research is trying to fill the gap in the literature by doing laboratory measurements to investigate the FIV of flexible bluff bodies with an asymmetric and non-circular cross-section. The two structures studied in this research are (a) a flexible cylinder with a triangular cross-section and (b) a flexible circular cylinder with an attached flexible splitter plate. Among the effective parameters affecting the FIV response of the system, the role of the angle of attack of the triangular cylinder and the length of the splitter plate is investigated in our study. Findings from this research can leverage our fundamental understanding of the fluid-structure interactions response of the long-span flexible asymmetric structures, with applications in the design of fluidic energy harvesters as well as suppression of unwanted vibrations of systems operating in fluid environments. A series of well-controlled lab experiments have been conducted using water channel tests. Cylinder's oscillation was captured using a high-speed imaging technique, and the spanwise continuous response was reconstructed using a modal-analysis based technique. The structural response of the system is analyzed in terms of its oscillation amplitude and frequency. Qualitative and quantitative flow field visualizations and measurements have been conducted using Hydrogen Bubble (HB) and the state-of-the-art time-resolved volumetric Particle Tracking Velocimetry (TR-PTV) techniques. Three-dimensional vortex dynamics in the wake of the structure are studied and analyzed using the proper orthogonal decomposition technique. The interaction between structural dynamic response and the vortex-dominated flow field in the wake of the structure leads to a fully coupled fluid-structure interactions response that is investigated in this research. ADVISOR(S): Dr. Banafsheh Seyed-Aghazadeh, Dept of Mechanical Engineering (b.aghazadeh@umassd.edu) COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Mehdi Raessi, Department of Mechanical Engineering Dr. Hangjian Ling, Department of Mechanical Engineering Dr. Miles Sundermeyer, Dept of Estuarine & Ocean Sciences/SMAST NOTE: All EAS Students are ENCOURAGED to attend.

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Last modified: Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 11:41 by Christine Allen

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