Labs & Other Facilities

Three research labs in the Engineering Technology Department and the Smart Materials and Structures Research Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston will offer space to conduct the research projects.

Extensive facilities in optical networking and communications have been established in Engineering Technology under the Optical Network Research Laboratory, funded by UH, Sprint, AT&T and Fujitsu. In particular, the lab is equipped with state of the art test equipment and networking gears such as optical spectrum analyzer (OSA), 4Ghz oscilloscope, SONET switches and IP routers. It is also equipped with software simulation tools, including OPNET, VPIphotonics, and MatLab. The lab is part of the technology test bed that connects ONRL to the ATT lab.

The Intelligent Sensor Grid and Informatics Laboratory (ISGRIN) in Engineering Technology is equipped with various sensor stations, one data acquisition and control station by dSPACE, and two data acquisition and five electromechanical systems by the Quanser Corporation with real-time control, 32 sensor and communication nodes, and 5 gateways from Xbow, as well as sensor network simulation software packages, and general development environments such as Matlab/Simulink suitable for real-time and/or simulated feedback control projects.

The Smart Materials and Structures Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UH will offer space to conduct smart materials and vibration related experiments. The following equipment is available and will be used in the proposed activities. Many of them were purchased through the NSF CAREER Award and NASA grants to Dr. Song in the Mechanical Engineering Department, including five dSPACE data acquisition and real time control systems, such as smart beams with piezoceramic sensors and actuators, traffic poles with tuned mass dampers, frames with MR fluid dampers, and platforms with adjustable damping and stiffness, seven programmable current amplifiers, six voltage amplifiers for piezoelectric actuators, which can be used to drive shape memory alloy actuators and electromagnets, and various piezoelectric sensors and actuators, accelerometers, LVDTs, laser range sensors, and force gauges.

The Test Bed of Smart Sensors lab works with NASA-SSC Integrated System Health Management and involves development and testing of smart sensor networks based on interoperable standards such as the IEEE 1451 standard suite. The lab is equipped with an optical table and various fiber-optic sensor development projects. In addition, data acquisition equipment and LabView software are being used to harmonize sensor standardization efforts within the emerging standard, IEEE 1451. Software development tools and single board computers are being used for demonstration of interoperability tests.

The ATT Lab is the result of more than two years of collaboration between the University of Houston and Southwestern Bell Communications, Inc (now ATT) in the areas of telecommunications, networks, and education. The purpose of the Lab is to serve as a hub for the educational and research community and to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. To achieve its goals, the Lab has been equipped with state-of-the-art networking and communications equipment which include a campus-wide three-node SONET/MPLS and gigaethernet testbed that connects to four other UH research labs, wireless internet, and high-definition videoconferencing and videostreaming.

The Mechanical Engineering Department Machine Shop has one full-time professional machinist who will support the machining needs for experimental setups proposed in this research. Likewise, the Engineering Technology Department offers its fully equipped Machine Shop, including a modern Rapid-Prototyping Machine for this project. The Mechanical Engineering Technology labs are staffed by a full-time Lab Manager who will assist the REU students with their needs.

The Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Technology each have a full-time computer and electronics support person, who will provide help to setup and maintain computers and other equipment. In addition, the Department of Engineering Technology employs two full-time Lab Managers in the Computer Engineering Technology program who can also assist the REU interns.

Additional REU collaboration exist under the College of Technology's Abramson Center for the Future of Health and Center for Life Science Technology (CLiST) to develop sustained educational and research efforts in healthcare and biotechnology; as well as in the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC), sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The center's goal is to provide engineering services to small to-medium sized manufacturers with the purpose of increasing their global competitiveness. Typical areas covered include manufacturing and security infrastructure among others.