S-STEM Scholar Jeff Pietila's Blog

     Last year, a group of researchers from Western Australia wrote a paper about the increasing amount of solar generated rooftops and the idea of using blockchain technology for energy trading.  Peer-to-Peer energy trading is the focus of this peer reviewed research paper that ultimately proposes a blockchain scalability solution (Pornpit Wongthongtham, 2021).       They reported that Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading of energy has emerged as a next generation system in energy management that enables prosumers, who are consumers who produce their own solar energy, to trade their surplus energy.  This would create opportunities for power system markets and would transform the way consumers use their energy, allowing them to trade energy with their peers.  P2P electricity markets may allow consumers to freely choose their source of electric energy by, for instance, investing in locally produced renewable energy (Pornpit Wongthong...

     Smart materials, also known as intelligent materials, are gaining importance in several industries including aerospace.  These materials have unique features such as self-sensing, self-adaptability, and memory capabilities.  Graduate Researcher Al Arsh Basheer, who is studying the field of Robotics and automation at the University of California, Davis had his peer-reviewed findings published in Volume 92, Number 7, Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology , pages 1027 – 1035  (Basheer, 2020) .      His article describes the classification, working principle, applications, recent developments (nano-smart materials) and future perspectives.  He describes the classification of smart materials based on their properties.  These properties that are used include thermal, electric and magnetic and the materials are classified based on the changes occurring in their shape, phase, color, energy, matter, adhesio...

            My peer reviewed article this week is titled, "Engineering through distance education in the time of the fourth industrial revolution: Reflections from three decades of peer reviewed studies".  It was published as a Special Issue Article in the publication Computer Applications in Engineering Education November 23 rd of 2020.   It was written by Dr. Serpil Kocdar, Dr. Aras Bozkurt and Dr. Tulay Goru Dogan who all received their PhD's in Distance Education and are all college professors in Turkey  (ResearchGate, n.d.) .  The aim of their study was to investigate the field of engineering through distance education by text-mining and social network analysis examining 120 publications on this topic  (Kocdar, 2020) .      While examining the geographical distributions of the publications, they found that most of the educational contributions came from the United States.  The...

     My peer reviewed article this week is about " Perspectives on Environmental Barrier Coatings (EBCs) Manufactured via Air Plasma Spray (APS) on Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs):  A Tutorial Paper " published in Springer Nature's Journal of Thermal Spray Technology on February 9, 2021.  It was written by Kang N. Lee and Dongming Zho of NASA, and Rogerio S. Lima of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).  It begins by explaining the objective of this paper is to present the reader of how and why these new coatings are being used in jet engines.  It explains the non-stop driving force behind increasing combustion temperatures of jet engines, showing the basic concepts of CMCs and the need of identifying the complexity of creating EBC architecture.  Finally, they showed how Environmental Barrier Coatings (EBCs) and Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) are tested at high temperatures  (ASM International, 2021) .     The driving force behind this new tech...

                Vassilis Theofilis from the University of Liverpool and Pino Martin from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland had their peer reviewed research reviewed and reported by Dr. Sarah Popkin, AFSOR in Springer Nature's publication, Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics on February 21, 2022.  Dr. Popkin reported about how flow phenomena on maneuverable vehicles that fly at hypersonic speeds and altitudes that reach the Earth's upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere pose challenges that are on the reported that cutting edge of today's research frontiers of Fluid Mechanics  (Springer Nature, 2022) .      Dr. Popkin reported that research agencies around the world have realized the multiple benefits derived from studying actual flying platforms and support for hypersonic research has increased dramatically in the last 10 years ...