Research@Mines - by Subject
Mechanical Engineering

South Dakota Mines receives $1.3 Million Grant for New Scanning Electron Microscope to Benefit Research and Industry

South Dakota Mines is installing a new Scanning Electron Microscope in the university’s Engineering and Mining Experiment Station.

South Dakota Mines is installing a new Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in the university’s Engineering and Mining Experiment Station (EMES) thanks to a $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The new microscope is just one of many state-of-the-art scientific instruments inside the recently expanded EMES which serves high-tech industry alongside university researchers across the state.

The powerful SEM microscope is a centerpiece of the EMES. It allows researchers to perform high resolution imaging, chemical analysis and sample manipulation for various materials at scales ranging down to 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The new microscope is a critical resource for a wide variety of research across multiple disciplines.

“The SEM is the most heavily used research instrument on campus,” says Grant Crawford, Ph.D., the director of the Arbegast Materials Processing and Joining Laboratory at Mines and an associate professor in the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering.

The new SEM is equipped with a focused ion beam that dramatically expands its capability over the old system. The ion beam allows researchers to extract samples for separate analysis and cr...

Last Edited 1/19/2021 04:07:49 PM [Comments (0)]

Mines Mechanical Engineering Alumnus Conducts Research on Dental-Related Infections

Joree Sandin, 2018 South Dakota Mines mechanical engineering graduate, participated in research in the area of antibiotic resistant infections as a master’s student at the University of Kentucky.

As a mechanical engineering graduate from South Dakota Mines, Joree Sandin never expected to do medical research, but the 2018 graduate has spent the past two years focused on antibiotic resistant infections. 

“Three or four years ago, as a mechanical engineering major at Mines, I would never have imagined that I would have gained this experience … my car took a random exit toward this bio world and I’m so glad it did,” she says. 

Sandin recently completed her master’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Kentucky College of Engineering. She returned to Mines in October to co-present the research seminar, “A Mechanical Engineer’s Approach to Bacterial Infections,” alongside Dr. Martha E. Grady, assistant professor in mechanical engineering at UK and lead researcher on the work. 

The UK research Sandin has been a part of focuses on biofilm formations, specifically in dental care.  

Biofilms are a collection of microorganisms that grow on surfaces. The microorganisms that make up biofilms can include bacteria, protists and fungi. “Biofilms are really everywhere,” Sandin say...

Last Edited 12/3/2020 08:32:39 PM [Comments (0)]

The Quest to Control the Voxel and the 3D Printing Revolution to Come

Travis Walker, Ph.D., holds an example of a 3D printed item made with two different materials. He and Katrina Donovan, Ph.D., say this object is a large-scale example of the kind of 3D printed materials now possible at scales smaller than a human hair.

Imagine camouflage that renders a subject almost invisible; prosthetic limbs that look and feel like real appendages; smartphone battery power that’s embedded throughout the thin fabric of your clothing; windows that direct light to different parts of the room throughout the day. All of these ideas and much more may be possible with a new age of material science that is now unfolding. Researchers at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology are learning to manipulate the basic properties of innovative materials to enable revolutionary new products.

“We’re really trying to enhance voxel-level engineering,” says Travis Walker, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at South Dakota Mines.

So, what’s a voxel? In photography, the sharpness of an image depends on the number of pixels per inch. More pixels in an image yield more vivid detail.

Move into three dimensions, and resolution is not determined by pixels, but voxels. Like digital photography, the resolution in 3D printing technology keeps getting better. Today, researchers are working to manipulate single voxel sizes that are smaller than the diameter of a human hair. This effort means very fine and detailed 3D printing.

The next evolution in 3D printing may involve the ability to change the properties of a material, voxel by voxel. Just as many different colored pixels make...

Last Edited 10/4/2021 03:31:29 PM [Comments (0)]

Hyperloop - Mines Alumnus on the Cutting-Edge of Transportation

“Flying 700 miles per hour through a tube using magnets and sunlight isn’t a dream.”

The baritone narrator in a video describing the proposed Great Lakes Hyperloop makes the case that a twenty-eight minute commute over the 343 miles that separate Cleveland from Chicago is a near-term reality.

Chuck Michael-2For Chuck Michael (CE 77), hyperloop is the future of transportation. “This is a game-changing technology with a huge public benefit,” he says. “You could work in downtown Chicago and live in Cleveland and get to work faster than sitting on the freeway from the Chicago suburbs.”

The hyperloop concept involves a magnetically levitated capsule that is propelled through a vacuum tunnel at velocities approaching the speed of sound using renewable wind and solar energy. Michael is the head of US feasibility studies and regulatory advisor for the company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies based in Los Angeles. “We use a proprietary passive magnetic levitation system, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab,” Michael says. A small forward motion on the permanent magnetic array creates a field that aids both propulsion and levitation.

“We can levitate twenty tons at walking speed,” Michael says. A "re...

Last Edited 2/3/2020 09:18:48 PM [Comments (0)]

SD Mines Team Pushes to Put CubeSat Swarm in Space

This image shows what a swarm of CubeSats orbiting Earth might look like. Credit NASA.

Satellites are often thought of as huge complicated devices that are deployed on the tops of rockets or in space shuttle payloads. They hold massive telescopes, sophisticated weather monitoring devices or global positioning system components.  The price tag for large satellites is often measured in billions, not millions. 

CubeSats are different. They’re smaller - think volleyball, not Volkswagen - and they’re cheaper.  NASA describes a CubeSat as a “low-cost pathway to conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space, thus enabling students, teachers, and faculty to obtain hands-on flight hardware development experience.”  The cost of these nanosatellites is small enough to fit into many school budgets. CubeSats are built to investigate areas of scientific interest such as the earth’s atmosphere, space weather, in-space propulsion, radiation testing, and communication, to name a few. Satellites are selected based on their investigations and how they align with NASA’s strategic plan.

One area of CubeSat research at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is to expand from one small satellite to a swarm of small satellites working together. This has the potential to multiply the impact and effectiveness of a single CubeSat.

“Sometimes you want t...

Last Edited 9/3/2019 04:50:28 PM [Comments (0)]

Termite Mounds Hide Secrets to Sustainable Buildings of the Future

Andrea Surovek, Ph.D., a research scientist from SD Mines’ Department of Mechanical Engineering, standing next to a termite mound in Namibia.

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology has been awarded $475,000 from the National Science Foundation to study how termites construct mounds with the idea that humans might one day adapt the energy-efficient homebuilding techniques of the insects. The award is a follow-up to a previous grant by NSF of $300,000.

Mines faculty researchers spent time in the African country of Namibia to study the shape and function of termite mounds. The mounds are resilient and naturally energy efficient. Their intricate interior designs provide ventilation and temperature regulation throughout what can easily be a 15-foot-tall home for a single colony of 2 million termites. 

“An understanding of the natural processes involved in termite mound construction and function can be adapted to inform engineering applications related to the construction of man-made structures that require zero or minimal energy inputs,” said the NSF award letter.

Co-principal investigator Andrea Surovek, Ph.D., a research scientist from SD Mines’ Department of Mechanical Engineering, has lead research that examined hundreds of slices of a termite mound and has developed three-dimensional models of numerous mounds using ...

Last Edited 10/30/2018 09:21:47 PM [Comments (0)]

Composite Bridge Winners Use Lightweight, Strong, Inexpensive Material Developed at SD Mines

Krishnan Veluswamy, a Ph.D. student in the Materials Engineering and Science Program at SD Mines, holding the bridge his team built and his 2018 SAMPE International University Leadership Experience Award.

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology students took home second place in the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE) 2018 Student Bridge Contest, by designing a bridge weighing just 12.5 ounces that can carry a 2,000-pound load.

The competition, held in Long Beach, Calif., pitted SD Mines researchers against 70 teams from 30 universities from around the world. Teams were tasked to design, build and test a 24-inch-long structural composite bridge using fiber reinforced plastics and high-performance materials. The annual event challenges teams to make bridges that carry a specified load while also being as lightweight as possible. The Mines bridge placed second in the inaugural year of the sandwich beam category at SAMPE’s bridge contest.

“The SAMPE bridge competition is a fantastic opportunity for students to develop some hands-on composite fabrication skills and to see how the process side of composites engineering truly impacts their final performance,” says Eric Schmid, SD Mines bridge team member and SAMPE North America Young Professionals committee chair. “SAMPE provides an excellent platform for students to demonstrate their capabilities, and the chance to attend the SAMPE conference and bridge competition really gives students a great view of how important compo...

Last Edited 8/14/2018 04:35:41 PM [Comments (0)]

Ballooning in the Shadow of the Moon

This image, courtesy of the South Dakota Solar Eclipse Balloon Team, shows the moon's shadow crossing the Nebraska Panhandle during the Great American Eclipse of 2017.

At 10:35 a.m. on August 21, 2017, in a field in front of a small Nebraska Panhandle farmhouse, a team consisting of SD Mines students, Black Hills area high school students, teachers and community members, meticulously followed a set of steps they had practiced many times before. Payloads were carefully secured, batteries checked, and scientific instruments turned on and tested. Soon, helium was coursing through a hose from tanks in the back of a pickup truck into an eight-foot-tall balloon laid out on the soft grass.

Above the desolate cornfields and sandhills of northwestern Nebraska the moon was starting its path across the sun–the arc of its shadow racing across the country toward this team. The Great American Eclipse was underway.

The South Dakota Solar Eclipse Balloon Team had been working for two years to prepare for this one sliver in time. Their goal—to launch this balloon at the exact moment to loft the payload to an altitude of about 100,000 feet, under the moon’s shadow, during two minutes of totality. On board were video cameras, a radiation detector, GPS, and other scientific experiments. This project aimed to capture images and data from the eclipse. The radiation detector would help measure the flux of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere as the moon obscured the sun. The video cameras would capture the circle of the moon’s shadow on the earth. The team designed and built some of ...

Last Edited 5/17/2018 09:53:34 PM [Comments (0)]

Growing Copper Deep Underground: SD Mines Plays Integral Role in Successful MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR Experiment

Much of the experiment’s copper is processed underground to remove both natural radioactivity (such as thorium and uranium) and radioactivity generated above ground when cosmic rays strike the copper. Electroforming relies on an electroplating process that over several years forms the world’s purest copper stock. Ultrapure copper is dissolved in acid and electrolytically forms a centimeter-thick plate around a cylindrical stainless-steel mandrel. Any radioactive impurities are left behind in the acid. Here collaborator Cabot-Ann Christofferson of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology measures the thickness of copper pulled from an electroforming bath. Credit: Sanford Underground Research Facility; photographer Adam Gomez

The collaborators working on the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR have published a study in the journal Physical Review Letters showing the success of the experiment housed in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). The success of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR opens the door for the next phase of the experiment and sets the stage for a breakthrough in the fundamental understanding of matter in the universe. 

The experiment, led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, involves 129 researchers from 27 institutions and six nations. The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology was an integral part in facilitating the underground laboratory space at SURF and helped lead the effort to build the ultra-pure components needed to construct a successful experiment. 

“The goal was to demonstrate the feasibility and capability to build a larger one-ton experiment,”  says Cabot-Ann Christofferson, the Liaison and a Task Leader within the  MAJORANA Collaboration at the Sanford Underground Lab and an...

Last Edited 6/28/2018 07:05:55 PM [Comments (0)]

South Dakota Space Grant Awards $176,000 in NASA Funding to SD Mines and Five South Dakota Institutions

A team of Mines students working on a component of the National Solar Eclipse Balloon Project. This is one example of a research funded by the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium headquartered at Mines.

The South Dakota Space Grant Consortium (SDSGC) has provided nine awards totaling approximately $176,000 in NASA funding to SD Mines and five affiliate members of the Consortium.

The Space Grant Consortium, headquartered at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, is a statewide network of 20 member organizations from education, industry and government. As the link between NASA and the citizens of South Dakota, the Consortium’s mission is to instill the spirit of exploration and discovery in students, educators and the general public, with a special focus on the fields of science, technology, engineering and math that are essential for the development of the nation’s workforce.

One grant of $17,100 was awarded directly to a Mines student, Kari Pulli, a junior in mechanical engineering, as a scholarship for a project titled “Student CO-OP for Aerospace and High-Altitude Technology Development.”  Pulli was selected by officials at Raven-Aerostar for an eight-month student internship at its Sioux Falls facility. This is on top of a previously announced SDSGC grant of $25,000 to SD Mines for a project titled: “Computational Astronomy for Teachers and Their Students.

In total, nine winning projects were competitively selected from among 15 proposals submitted under the SDSGC’s FY2016 Project Innovati...

Last Edited 2/3/2017 05:02:17 PM [Comments (0)]

Research Inquiries

For inquiries related to South Dakota Mines Research, contact:

Research Affairs

South Dakota Mines
501 E. St. Joseph Street
Suite 102, O'Harra Building
Rapid City, SD  57701

(605) 394-2493