In Memoriam

Chester Dudzik, Ph.D., professor emeritus of mechanical engineering in CETA, died on Monday, July 28, 2008 at St. Elizabeth Home in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, after a long illness. He was the husband of Gloria Crowell Dudzik of Warwick, R.I. Born in Pawtucket, R.I, he was one of three children of the late John and Anna Dudzik. Besides his wife and a sister, he is survived by six children, Diane Burns of Warwick, Chester Dudzik, Jr. of Greenwich, Conn., Greg Dudzik of South Kingstown, John Dudzik of Greenwich, Conn, Gail Votoloto of Warwick, and Frank Dudzik of Basking Ridge, N.J.; and fourteen grandchildren. He was the father of the late Marc Dudzik of Warwick.

A graduate of Pawtucket East High School, he received his bachelor's degree in engineering with high honors from Brown University. He then attended and taught at Purdue University, where he received his Master’s and Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering. A distinguished member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he worked as Head of Engineering for the Leesona Corporation in Warwick, before he became an internationally acclaimed professional consultant in textile patent litigation. Dr. Dudzik also became a tenured professor at the University of Hartford's College of Engineering. An avid and accomplished bridge player, he achieved Master status. He enjoyed golf, and was a member of the Wannamoisett Country Club for many years.

Dr. Dudzik’s funeral will be held on Thursday, July 31, at 9 a.m. from the Barrett & Cotter Funeral home, 1328 Warwick Avenue, Spring Green, Warwick, with a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 a.m. in St. Timothy Church, 1799 Warwick Avenue, Warwick. Visiting hours are Wednesday 4-7 p.m. Burial will be in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Providence. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to St. Elizabeth Home, One St. Elizabeth Way, East Greenwich, RI 02818.

Our sympathies are with Dr. Dudzik's family.

A Correction

In our last post, about various papers and presentations made by CETA Faculty, Anna Nagurney's title and affiliation were incorrectly reported. Dr. Nagurney is the John F. Smoth Memorial Professor in the Department of Finance and Operations Management in the Isenberg School of Management with appointments in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. We apologize for the error.

Bloomfield Students Visit CETA

On Friday, July 18, ten eighth-grade students from the Learning Is Earning Program at Carmen Arace Middle School in Bloomfield toured CETA as part of their visit to the University. BriAnna West, Salma Bazlur, Ashley Brown, Jordan Gary, Victoria Hayes, Lashan Lee, Sashe’ Llewelyn, Corrine Patterson, Evan Varela, and Jasmin Walker were accompanied by two Arace guidance counselors, Karen Goldman and Allison Glenney.

The focus of the Learning Is Earning Program is teaching the students about the importance of education as it relates to careers and life style. The students spent three weeks learning about life skills such as budgeting, etiquette, listening and communication skills, and career exploration using career software that helps the students hone in on possible career clusters, college choices, résumé writing, etc. The program also included guest speakers who talked about their career paths and visits to various workplaces such as the Bloomfield Police Department and CIGNA as well as the University of Hartford.

In CETA, the students saw various labs and classrooms and then were introduced to Maria Qadri, a senior majoring in Biomedical Engineering, who showed the students several projects being worked on in our Environmental Lab. Maria also took the students to see one of CETA’s two wind tunnels. Because the tunnel was being set up for an experiment, she couldn’t demonstrate it, but the students were interested in the setup and asked many questions.

Here are some photos of the visit.

Maria and the students in the Environmental Lab talking about experiments being run there.

Maria with the spacesuit mockup used in experiments run for NASA.

One of the students trying on the mockup.

Maria explaining the wind tunnel to the students.

Faculty Present Findings and Publish Papers in June

Several CETA faculty members attended the 2008 ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) Conference and Exposition June 22 through 25. This was the 115th annual meeting of the ASEE, held this year at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More than 3500 engineering educators and students attended 386 sessions where papers were presented representing research in all areas of engineering education, including educational methods.

CETA faculty presentations included the following:

• Dr. Jonathan Hill, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, “Using an Educational Microprocessor Architecture and FPGA Implementation to Introduce Interrupts”


• Dr. Hill and Dr. Patricial Mellodge, assistant professor of electrical engineering, “Control System Design and Implementation Using the Motor Controls Toolkit—The Robot Car”


• Dr. Hill and Dr. Akram Abu-aisheh, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, “Educational Optical Fiber Data Communications Toolkit”


• Dr. Ivana Milanovic, associate professor and chair of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Tom Eppes, associate professor and chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, “Modular, Adaptable and Reusable Approach to Thermal-Fluids: Outwitting the Norms (MARATHON)”


• Dr. Milanovic, Dr. Eppes, and Janice Girouard, manager of Student Services for CETA, “An Integrative Approach to Undergraduate and Graduate Change”


• Dr. David Pines, associate professor and chair of Civil, Environmental, and Biomedical Engineering, and Dr. Hisham Alnajjar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean of CETA, “Evolution of an Interdisciplinary Sophomore Design Course at the University of Hartford”


• Dr. Devdas Shetty, dean of the College of Engineering at Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan; and Claudio Campana, research engineering in CETA, “Design of a Methodology for the Inspection of Broaching Tool”


• Daniel Davis, AIA, professor of architecture, director of design in the Hartford, Connecticut, office of Fletcher-Thompson Architects and Engineers, “Understanding Construction Project Relationships”

All the CETA participants in the ASEE Conference report that, in addition to the interesting presentations they attended and the networking opportunities on offer, they were able to enjoy the city of Pittsburgh and baseball—Professor Davis reports attending a Yankees baseball game against the Pirates.

Dr. Hill also attended the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Biomed 2008 Conference, held this year June 18 to 20 in Irvine, California. The conference sessions covered such topics as “Imaging and Anatomic Interaction,” “Device Technology and Innovation,” and “Bio-sensors and Diagnostics.” Dr. Hill presented three papers at the conference as follows:

• “System for Recording the Bowel Sounds of Premature Infants,” with M. Regan, a student; R. Adrezin (associate professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering), and L. Eisenfeld (physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center)


• “Wireless Central Apnea Response System for Neonatal Intensive Care,” with R. Adrezin and L. Eisenfeld.


• “Flexible Wireless Research-Oriented System for Human Performance Studies,” with M. Atallah (a student) and K. Ball (assistant professor of physical therapy in the College of Education, Nursing, and Health Professions)

Finally, Dr. Ladimer Nagurney, associate professor of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering, attended the Third International Conference on Funding Transportation Infrastructure in Paris, France. This conference, which was held June 19 and 20, focused on the relationship between pricing of transportation infrastructure and investments, considering institutional mechanisms such as earmarking of revenues, transportation funds, public private partnerships, and intergovernmental relationships that facilitate (or potentially impede) efficient pricing and investment decisions for transportation infrastructure. It was directed toward academics, researchers, industry practitioners and policymakers. Theoretical, empirical/case-study and policy-oriented contributions were presented. Dr. Nagurney presented a paper titled “Environmental Impact Assessment of Transportation Networks with Degradable Links in an Era of Climate Change” with Anna Nagurney (professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Qiang Qiang (Ph.D. student in management science), both of the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.

(The photo of the Pittsburgh skyline and one of the cities many bridges is used with the permission of Dr. Jonathan Hill.)

CETA Faculty Win Grants and Awards

Among the many grants and awards won by University of Hartford faculty last spring are the following won by CETA faculty.

Dr. Saeid Moslehpour, assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering, won a Greenberg Junior Faculty Grant that he will use to develop a simulation model for a microprocessor. The grant, an internal award to promote high-quality scholarship by faculty members just beginning their careers, provides for course release time and funding for a research assistant.

Dr. Moslehpour also won a Coffin Grant from the University to develop a translator of VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language) to SPICE (Simulation Program for Integrated Circuits Emphasis). His goal is to simulate analog/digital circuitry in one software environment.

In addition, Dr. Moslehpour received a $3,000 sub-award from NASA to work on Connecticut Space Grant College Consortium curriculum development.

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Dr. Akram Abu-aisheh, assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering, won a Coffin Grant to develop a low-cost fiber optics communications and sensors laboratory for teaching and developing new experiments in fiber optics. Coffin Grants are awarded to full-time faculty for a variety of scholarly and creative projects and for activities that enhance teaching or contribute to professional development.

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Dr. Robert Celmer, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received a $25,000 grant from the Paul S. Veneklasen Research Foundation that funded research into footfall noise characterization carried out by two of Dr. Celmer’s students under his supervision. Samantha “Sammi" Rawlings and Josh McGee won the Best Student Paper Award at the recent Acoustical Society of America held in New Orleans with their report on the results of this research.

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Dr. M. Saleh Keshawarz, associate professor of civil, environmental, and biomedical engineering, Dr. Hisham Alnajjar, associate professor of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering, and Dr. Ivana Milanovic, Associate Professor of mechanical engineering, received a grant from the Ministry of Higher Education in Afghanistan for work they are doing to improve engineering education at Herat University in Herat, Afghanistan.

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Dr. Thomas Filburn, the director of the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium, and Dr. Ivana Milanovic, chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department, received a total of $403,385 from NASA for three years of programs and projects in the Consortium, which comprises the University of Hartford, Bridgeport University, Central Connecticut State University, Connecticut College of Technology, Eastern Connecticut State University, Fairfield University, Southern Connecticut State University, Trinity College, University of Connecticut, UConn Health Center, University of New Haven, and Wesleyan University. The projects are carried out by students working with faculty.

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Dr. Filburn also received grants for various projects being performed by students under his direction as follows:

• ATCO Catalyst Study, funded by Jacobs Sverdrup, $29,975
• Bed Depth and Ammonia Capacity Testing, funded by NASA, $23,35
• Connecticut Space Grant Consortium–OWC, funded by the State of Connecticut Office for Worksforce Competitiveness, $78,000
• Development of Ion Flow Control Techniques, funded by Pratt & Whitney, $1,600
• Low-Cost Solar Concentrators, funded by Connecticut Innovations, $280,416
• Novel CO2 Removal Technologies for Use on Mars, funded by NASA, $114, 933

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James Fuller, associate professor of architecture in CETA; Associate Professor Terri Albert, associate professor of management and marketing in the Barney School of Business; Jeffrey Cohen, associate professor of economics, finance and insurance in the Barney School of Business; Associate Professor David Pines, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in CETA; and Nancy Wynn, assistant professor in visual communication design in the Hartford Art School received a $25,000 grant from the Capitol Region Council of Governments for an Assessment of Current Resources in the Capitol Region for Livable Community Design Support and Building Livable Community Design Capacity.

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Dr. Pines also received a grant of $10,000 from Pratt & Whitney to support the work of the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. That chapter recently built a solar-powered well in the village of Abheypur in India, providing a sustainable solution to the problem of how to more easily access water for the villagers.

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Frank Lahey, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, who serves as advisor to the fSAE (Formula Society of Automotive Engineers) club and team, received a $15,000 grant from the Newman’s Own Foundation in support of the team’s efforts to build a car and compete in the national fSAE competition.

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Dr. Louis Manzione, Dean of CETA, received $30,000 from the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology in support of his Nanotechnology Curriculum Initiative. Dean Manzione chairs the
Connecticut Department of Higher Education Consortium on Nanotechnology, which to develop new course curriculum with an emphasis on nanotechnology and the twenty-first century workforce.

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Dr. Chittaranjan Sahay, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received a grant for $63,990 from Jacobs Vehicle Systems, Inc., for New Product Development of Machine Layout. Professor Sahay also received a grant of $9,900 from Pratt & Whitney to work on Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue Studies in Single Crystals Under Low Cycle Fatigue.

fSAE Team Places in Competition

The competition is over, the results are in. CETA’s fSAE car did well; the team, Erick Rickert, Jonathan Scales, Brett Tuffano, Zach Frank, George Bongart (who did outstanding machining work for the team throughout the year), Nick Gervasi, Jacob Roehl ( who did the molding for the body work), and captain Steve Osuch, learned a lot; and they will apply the lessons learned on next year’s car.

As reported in an earlier post, the team who went to California consisted of Steve Osuch, Jonathan Scales, Eric Rickert, Nick Gervasi, and Brett Tufano, accompanied by their advisor Dr. Frank Lahey and last year’s captain, Ben Young. Brett, Steve, and Ben went to California early so they could go to the facility the car had been shipped to in Riverside, California and get it prepped for the track before the rest of the team got there.

When they got to the car, they found footprints on the top of the crate that lead to a gaping hole in it. Something had been stacked or stood on the crate and had fallen through onto the car. However, the team didn’t find any damage and set about getting everything ready to head to the track.

The first day of the competition was spent registering and getting the car prepped for technical inspection.

The second day also involved some waiting, this time for technical inspection, while a couple of the team members went to various static events such as the marketing presentation, the design presentation, and the cost report discussion and presentation. Some members also had to go to drivers’ meetings to make sure everyone understood all the track rules.

The only issue found during the technical inspection was the car’s shoulder harness bar; the team had to replace it with different material. That task was done in about 30 minutes, and they received their first technical inspection sticker to show that the car complied with the rules.

The third day, Friday, was difficult and, Steve reports, “seemingly impossible for us.” Because they had had to wait in line the day before for auto tech inspection, they had to finish all the other tech inspections the morning of the third day. But the inspection station didn't open until 8 a.m., and skidpad and acceleration runs had to be performed between 8 a.m. and 1130 a.m. The team arrived at the inspection stations at 7 on the dot (when the track opened up), got the car all set to go for the tilt table, brake test, and noise test, and sat first in line to fill up with fuel before going to the tilt table.

The tilt table consists of a hydraulic table on which the car is placed with the tallest driver (Steve) sitting inside . Then the table is tilted up to 60 degrees from horizontal (very steep!) to determine whether the car will roll over or spill any fluids. The 60-degree tilt simulates a 2-G lateral acceleration on the car as it corners. Steve says, “I can verify that it was quite a rush being in our car with a simulated 2 G's as they let me sit there for a minute while they checked the car for leaks.”

From the tilt table, the car was pushed over to the noise test, which consists of a check to make sure the car’s muffler attenuates the noise of the engine below 110dB. CETA’s custom-made muffler, created by Brett Tufano and Zach Frank, tested at 109.6dB. That result arises from excellent engineering; it means that the team got the maximum amount of flow possible out of the muffler while complying with the rules.

Next, the car was pushed forward onto the brake test track where the team watched the car accelerate and come to a controlled stop, locking up all 4 wheels on the first try. The team was nervous because just before the car was shipped out to California, a brake line cracked and they had to bleed the brakes and set up the bias without actually being able to have the car on the ground, so all of the settings were an educated guess. If all four tires hadn't locked up during the test, they would have been allowed to adjust the brakes and try again; however, as mentioned before, time was of the essence.

At this point the car was having engine troubles that the team had not been able to address before because they were not allowed to run the engine until after passing the tech inspection. They weren’t even sure the car would be able to run well enough to get up to speed.

Despite the problems, the car received all three tech stickers and it was only 9:30 in the morning, meaning they had 2 hours to quickly tune up the engine and hit the acceleration and skidpad tracks. They were able to tune the car a little bit but were still having problems. Still, they were running out of time and had to head to the track. Brett Tufano drove and managed a 5.6-second run on the acceleration track, an 82-yard straightaway. The car was capable of doing much better than that, but the engine was still having problems that the team could not pinpoint, and it was time to go to the skidpad.

That is a figure-8 track on which the driver has to go as fast as possible without losing control. Brett drove again and made an impressive 5.48-second run, putting CETA in 19th place for skidpad. The team was very happy with that result since the engine was still running poorly.

After the skidpad, the team worked on the engine to prepare for the autocross run later in the evening and tested their changes on the practice track. While Steve was driving, he reported that it felt like the throttle stuck. Upon inspection, the team discovered a large hole in the intake manifold. Apparently, a tiny crack had formed next to one of the mounts. The crack caused an air leak that wreaked havoc on the tuning of the engine. Eventually, the crack got worse, blew off the mount completely, and formed a large hole. The team was able to fix the problem by welding a patch, and they knew immediately that they had identified the problem because the engine ran better, but they were out of time to tune it up for the autocross run.

The autocross track is a very curvy and hard-to-navigate track the purpose of which is to measure overall vehicle performance. When driving on the track, Steve could tell that the motor was running better, but it wasn't quite up to the power it should have had. The car was handling "fantastically," but it wasn't going as fast as it should have been going, giving CETA a 61-second run compared to the best 49-second run. As the driver of this event, Steve says, “I know that if the car was running the way it was in testing, we could have gotten much closer to this best time, if not even better.”

After the autocross event, there was only one more event to prepare for: the endurance run. Since the team didn't have to run it until the following afternoon, they finally had some time to tune the car up and get it running really well. In fact, they got the car running “very fast.”

The endurance run is basically a display of both performance and engineering. The corners are not quite as demanding on the car as in the autocross but the car has to run for almost 14 miles straight to see whether anything breaks. If the track workers see anything break on a car that poses a risk to anyone or renders a car noncompliant with the rules, they black-flag the car and pull it off the track and that team is done. Even if the problem is simple to fix, teams are not allowed to fix it. With Steve driving again, the car was running even with Honda Technical University. On the third lap, just as the tires were getting warm and the car was starting to handle well, a critical bracket failed, causing CETA’s muffler to shift back slightly. Although the muffler was still attached to the car, it became extremely loud and therefore not up to spec anymore. The car was pulled out of the endurance race by the officials.

The team members were very disappointed; they had fixed all the problems they faced during the week, and the car was running very well. But as Steve says, “we pulled it together and held our chins up high because for the first time in four years, the University of Hartford made it to a competition . . . in California, 2900 miles away nonetheless . . . and showed up and competed in every single event. Instead of getting a forfeit next to our name, we got placed.”

CETA placed 33rd in cost, 17th in design, 19th in skidpad, and 30th in acceleration. Overall, with the rest of the static events factored in and our DNF (Did Not Finish) in the endurance, CETA placed 43rd out of the 65 schools that competed (of the 82 registered). “We did not win, but we did place and we are happy about that. It was bittersweet, though, knowing that our car was definitely capable of running with the top ten cars out there had we only found our problem sooner.”

The team has gained a vast amount of experience from actually making it to an event and now know what has to be done to design and make a winning car. The members are confident that next year they will go to the competition in Michigan and turn a lot of heads when everyone sees University of Hartford on the leader board. The University of Maryland impressed everyone this year going from 99th to a first-place finish in just four years; the team is determined to impress all the participants by going from no car to 43 to first in only three seasons.

Next year, the captain of the team will be Jon Scales, with Steve Osuch remaining as president of the fSAE program.

The team would like to thank the University of Hartford Student Government Association this year for their very generous budget of close to $11,000 this past season and another $11000 for the upcoming season. With travel and shipping expenses at an all-time high, it would not have been possible to build the car and compete without every single sponsor's donation this year.

For a photo gallery showing the team and the car in California, please go to uhaweb.hartford.edu/fsae/california.

[This article was written by Natalie Segal with input from Steve Osuch.]

Roosa Chair Awarded to Dr. C. Sahay

Professor Chittaranjan Sahay will be awarded the Vernon D. Roosa Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Manufacturing Engineering in CETA. The Professorship honors Vernon D. Roosa, holder of 350 patents, including one for the diesel-fuel injection pump, which revolutionized the use of diesel power in its many applications. Although Mr. Roosa was self-educated, he was a strong supporter of professional training and endowed chairs of engineering and applied science at both the University of Hartford and Trinity College. The endowment here contributed to the success of CETA’s Engineering Applications Center, which performs research and development for local industries, with students, faculty and staff engineers carrying out the work.

Dr. Sahay is a full professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as well as a registered Professional Engineer and a Certified Manufacturing Engineer. Much of his research in manufacturing has been in assembly of electronics using solder paste, reliability testing of electronics using electrical frequency harmonics, mechanical students of high precision machining, and some of the most original work done on the mechanics of hard-to-cut materials. In May 2008, Dr. Sahay received the James E. and Frances W. Bent Award from the University in recognition of his scholarly work and his accomplishments in creative research. He is also a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and has received the ASME Ben C. Sparks Medal for Mechanical or Mechanical Engineering Technology Educator.

In announcing the award, Dean Lou Manzione stated that “we believe we have found in Professor Sahay someone who reflects the chair’s namesake: a person with exceptional diligence, creativity, and determination. Professor Sahay will be more than a worthy steward of the Roosa Endowment.” CETA congratulates Dr. Sahay on this honor.