My Research- Katie Kirsch (senior, Mechanical Engineering)

I just started working this semester in the Advanced Multi-Phase Flow Laboratory, under Dr. Seungjin Kim in the Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department. I became a part of his lab because I had expressed interest in research during my senior year to one of my professors (the EA faculty advisor!) and she put me in contact with Dr. Kim. My specific project deals with studying how pipe elbows affect flow regimes of an air-water mixture. Nuclear reactor plants contain multiple flow restrictions, such as elbows, throughout their piping systems and the effect these flow restrictions have on two-phase flow is not well understood. Understanding two-phase flow properties is essential to understanding the heat transfer capabilities the liquid-gas mixture that cools the nuclear reactor. I work in this lab for ~10-15 hours/week. More information about this lab can be found at http://www2.mne.psu.edu/AMFL/.

Before I became a part of Dr. Kim’s lab, I worked under Dr. Mirna Urquidi-Macdonald in the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. I became involved with Dr. Macdonald my second semester freshman year through the Women in Science and Engineering Research (WISER) program. Dr. Macdonald and I worked with artificial neural networks, specifically Kohonen Maps, as they applied to the material selection and material design processes. Artificial neural networks are able to organize large amounts of data by clustering the data by similarities and differences. We looked at specific metal alloys in various environments and were able to understand which metal alloys performed best in which environments, in terms of corrosion rates, through the use of artificial neural networks. I worked with Dr. Macdonald for ~5-10 hours/week.