A paper on the use of our MEMS cryogenic microphone nodes for quench detection in superconducting REBCO tapes just published. Many thanks to our collaborators Makoto Takayasu at MIT and Luisa Chiesa at Tufts for pushing this work forward!

M. Takayasu, R. White, L. Chiesa, A. Desai and M. Emerling, “REBCO Conductor Quench Detection Tests for MEMS Acoustic Sensor Array Diagnostics,” in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, Feb 6, 2024. doi: 10.1109/TASC.2024.3362761.

Congrats to PHD candidate Maijie Xiang for passing the PHD Qualifying Exams in Mechanical Engineering! Great work.

Prof. White traveled to the University of Aarhus, Denmark to test the Tufts Sonic Anemometer in the Mars Simulation Wind Tunnel. This unique facility allows testing under known flow conditions at reduced pressures. We tested both at 6 mbar in CO2 (Mars surface conditions) and at both 11 mbar and 4 mbar in air (stratospheric conditions on Earth) with relevance to both the Tufts Stratospheric Sonic Anemometer project and the Mars Sonic Anemometer project. The instrument performed very well, with resolution on the order of 2 cm/s, and within approximately 10% of laser doppler flow measurements at speeds up to 11 m/s. We also confirmed the importance of wake calibration for absolute accuracy, and will be making additional efforts using Computational Fluid Dynamics and experiments to provide updated calibration tables to improve to better than 10%.

PHD student Maijie Xiang has joined the group. Maijie comes to us from Boston University, where he completed his MS in Materials Science and Engineering, working on photo-acoustics in Prof. Chen Yang’s group. Maijie will be working on MEMS vibroacoustic sensors at Tufts.

The Tufts sonic anemometer flew to 122,000 feet over New Mexico on August 18, 2023. We spent 2 hours at float altitude. Total flight time was 5 hrs. 11 minutes. Many thanks to NASA Balloon Programs Office and Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility for providing the opportunity to fly! Data will be returning soon for processing.

This July the group delivered a high altitude sonic anemometry system to NASA Wallops Flight Center for integration into a high altitude balloon platform. The system is the latest update to the Tufts Sonic Anemometer and will provide three dimensional relative wind measurements and speed of sound measurements at a rate of just over 4 samples/second. Speed resolution is approximately 10 cm/s. The system will also log infrasound, pressure, temperature, GPS location, and orientation (9 DOF IMU) throughout the flight.

Summer students Zarina Kosherbayeva and Ben Fisher will be working the lab this summer on undergraduate research projects related to high altitude balloon instrumentation. Welcome to the lab!

Prof. White presented an invited talk on MEMS instrumentation for wind tunnel and aerodynamics measurements at Nanotech 2023 (TechConnect 2023) in New Harbor, Maryland on June 21.

Prof. White was inducted as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America on May 10, 2023. “For advancement in the field of acoustic micro-electro-mechanical systems.”

Prof. White presented two papers as the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Chicago.

Robert D. White, Aidan Beckett, Rishabh Chaudhary, Luisa Chiesa, Amish Desai, Odin Doolittle, Michael Emerling, Peter Moore, Makoto Takayasu, and Boning Zhang, “MEMS Microphone Arrays for Quench Detection in Superconducting Cables” in the 184^th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL, May 9 2023.

Robert D. White, Don Banfield, Rishabh Chaudhary, Timothy Cheng, Anthony Colaprete, Amanda Cook, Tara Curran, Arwen Dave, Julia Huckaby, Ian Neeson, Emmett Quigley, Abraham Rademacher, Freidlay Steve, and Bruce White, “A Martian Sonic Anemometer” in the 184^th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL, May 11 2023.