FLIP - Fluids Lab for Interdisciplinary Projects

FLIP is a non-traditional lab for research and design in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, led by Dr. Graham Doig and based at California Polytechnic State University, with connections to UNSW Australia, Sydney. 

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Barnacles stuck to the wind tunnel lab for years on end, Tynan, Brandon and Shaun of Lost Coast Surf Tech hit a major win last week at Cal Poly’s Innovation Quest - $5000 to keep their startup dreams alive!

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Cal Poly PROVE Lab finally unveiled their solar-powered world land speed record challenger last week! In about 2 months’ time the record attempts will be taking place at Palmdale, CA. In the meantime, watch aerospace engineers Will Sutton and Lacey Davis describe how the car works. FLIP was the testing and design partner for the car, nicknamed “Dawn” by the team.

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Lost Coast Surf Tech...yeah I’m going to say it... making waves.

We're proud of PROVE Lab Go!Grant student startup Lost Coast Surf Tech - not only was it just announced that they are finalists in Cal Poly's Innovation Quest competition where they could win $15,000 to develop the business, but they hit the headlines in Mustang News this week. Cal Poly Aerospace grads Shaun Wixted, Brandon Baldovin, and Tynan Guerra have been busy prototyping and lining up wind tunnel testing in the lab, with the guidance of Dr. Doig, so we’ll soon get the chance to see if their tech lives up to the hype!

Click through for the full Mustang News piece.

(photo Zach Donnenfield | Mustang News)

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Project Mobius, achieved a milestone this week in between our recent rainy days - over 1 hour of completely solar-powered flight! Aaaaand… some crash testing.

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Dr. Doig attended the American Australian Association's Global Leadership Summit in New York City this week - the 2 day workshop and networking event was designed to bring together past and present Scholars (Dr. Doig was a recipient of a Qantas scholarship back in 2011 - supporting postdoctoral research in the US on shockwave/fire interaction) to discuss interdisciplinary approaches to solving some of the world's biggest problems. And to drink some Coopers, 34 stories above Lexington Ave. As a very Australian random bonus event, some of the scholar's ran into former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd outside a store, making him almost as accessible as New Zealand's former Prime Minister. Dr. Doig also managed to get in a trip to the new Cornell-Tech campus on freezing Roosevelt Island, to get some ideas for Cal Poly's Entrepreneurship programs.  

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This quarter students in AERO 529 have had a lot of Flow Control Fridays (TM) in the wind tunnel lab, getting to know the technologies (and troubles!) companies are using to dramatically increase the aerodynamic performance of flight vehicles.

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Angela, Claire, Hans, Paul and Sam flew the Project Mobius wing they’ve been designing and building over the last few weeks - performance exceeded expectations and sets the scene for some long-duration solar flights in the coming month.

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Dr. Doig took some of Cal Poly's finest student aerodynamicists up to NASA Ames last week (students in his unique Aerodynamic Research and Development class, AERO568/569), where they got a rare look inside the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Center (a.k.a. the world's biggest wind tunnel). Teams got feedback on their own projects for Cal Poly's Low Speed Wind Tunnel, and spent the day with many Cal Poly alums who work at the cutting edge of R&D on programs like parachutes for Mars, low sonic boom demonstrators, and the massive Space Launch System rocket.

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Dr. Doig awarded Society of Women Engineer’s “Most Supportive Professor”

Dr. Graham Doig was awarded Cal Poly's Society of Women Engineers award for "Most Supportive Professor". Cal Poly's SWE branch is regularly ranked top in the nation for its programming to support female engineers, and Graham's award comes shortly after he announced an initiative to take participation of women engineers to 30% in the Prototype Vehicles Lab over the next 18 months.

Each year, SWE members are asked to nominate professors that they feel have gone above and beyond in offering support and encouragement to women and diversity in engineering. The following was said of him at the event:"This professor’s emphasis on fostering student creativity brings together students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, interests, and skill sets through collaborative and dynamic projects. He is the faculty advisor of PROVE Lab - Cal Poly's Prototype Vehicles Lab, which is working to smash the speed record for a land-based solar powered vehicle. When their record is set, it will also be led by a female engineer in the driver's seat! Through his support, these students have gone off to continue their enriching experiences with opportunities to work at places like NASA Ames."

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Teams in Dr. Doig's Aerodynamic Research and Development course got a tour from Cal Poly Aero alum, Nick Brake, of ES Aero's brand new SLO facility. ES Aero are prime contractors on NASA's cutting-edge electric concept plane, the X-57. The innovative company was founded by and is filled with Cal Poly Aero alums!

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FLIP's sister organization (Dr. Doig's other acronym) PROVE Lab today announced they have completed bodywork manufacturing for what will be the world's fastest solar-powered car this coming summer! Join Aerospace Engineer and Solar Car driver Lacey Davis as the team gets the final ultra-lightweight composite part out the oven and into the lab!

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FLIP grad student Tynan Guerra spent this Fall interning at NASA Langley Research Center with the Flow Physics and Control branch where he is working in the Probe Calibration Tunnel, a small Mach 3.5 supersonic wind tunnel to investigate a novel measurement technique called Focused Differential Laser Interferometry. Outside of work, he got to visit the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Udvar-Hazy Center, Shenandoah National Park, Washington DC, and Asheville NC. Spending a semester at NASA has been a dream come true for Tynan, and he is excited to return to Cal Poly in January where he can apply what he has learned in the low speed wind tunnel!

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UNSW Sydney PhD Candidate Kyle Forster was officially awarded his doctorate - congratulations Kyle! His thesis, "The Interactions of Streamwise Co-rotating and Counter-rotating Vortices" was successfully defended and the work resulted in several top quality publications currently coming through in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, and more. Kyle is taking up a job at Mercedes AMG F1 in England, becoming the 4th FLIP student to end up in Formula One. Well done Kyle!

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Graham Doig awarded grant from National Science Foundation

(Linda Moore, Monica Singer, Andres Hernandez, Nicki Holm, Graham Doig)

Dr. Graham Doig has been awarded a 2-year, $188,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the reasons why some students choose to participate in co-curricular engineering projects (such as Formula SAE, PROVE Lab, Concrete Canoe, Robotics Club and many more), while some students decide not to participate at all or leave projects after trying them. While the benefits to students of engaged involvement are relatively well documented, participation and experience varies a lot across students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. The study is aimed at obtaining a more scientific understanding of this so that student teams and campus coordinators can offer more effective programs that better encourage improved diversity and inclusivity.

The research will eventually expand to other college campuses in California to better understand how Cal Poly’s student body and “Learn by Doing” approach compares. The project, which will support several student researchers (including new hires Linda Moore and Andres Hernandez), is a collaboration with Dr. Chance Hoellwarth (Center for Engineering, Science and Mathematics Education) and Dr. Kathy Chen (Materials Engineering), with CSU STEM VISTA AmeriCorps volunteers Nicki Holm and Monica Singer.

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Quantel donates PIV Laser to FLIP

Leading laser technology company Quantel visited Cal Poly's Aerospace Engineering Department today to donate a high-power pulsed laser that will be used in Dr. Graham Doig's Low Speed Wind Tunnel lab. The new laser is powerful enough to illuminate particles in the air that flow around a wing or car model, allowing the software to "see" the vortices and turbulence that would normally be invisible. Quantel's Dr. Diane Wong and team also hosted a lunch to show our students other cool applications like lasers on the International Space Station and Curiosity Mars rover! Quantel's donation will make a big difference to research in the lab, as you can tell from our happy grad students in the photo, and the laser will also become a part of testing in the undergrad applied aerodynamics course - students can now use even more equipment that they'll see again in cutting edge tests in industry.

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Lauren Polo is continuing her work with NASA Ames on Infrared Thermography for wind tunnel tests, through a “Virtual Internship” mechanism from the NAMS program. She’s able to undertake lab work at Cal Poly with trips to Ames over the school breaks, to collaborate with her mentor Ted Garbeff at the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel complex.

From Salinas CA, Lauren was a transfer student who joined the university in her junior year, and worked with FLIP in Cal Poly’s Low Speed Wind Tunnel Lab. "I am working with researchers to find an optimal coating for high speed wind tunnel model infrared measurements. My major helped me prepare by giving me hands on technical experience before I went into my internship. I was already comfortable being in a lab and asking questions before I got to NASA. I have that thanks to Cal Poly!"

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Geary Yu and Alex Meraz are sponsored by the College of Engineer's Summer Undergraduate Research Program, and are working with FLIP and our client Tesla to look at a specific automotive aerodynamics problem that is helping the Tesla engineers understand whether small changes in bodywork can make a big difference in boundary layer behavior. Last week, Geary and Alex presented their results to Tesla's aerodynamics team in Hawthorne, CA. We'd love to show you a picture of that, but it's NOT ALLOWED. So here's a picture at the massive supercharger station outside the design studio instead.