Publications

Secondary containment for high speed rotating machinery, such as a centrifuge, is extremely important for operating personnel safety. Containment techniques can be very costly, ungainly and time consuming to construct. A novel containment concept is introduced which is fabricated out of modular sections of polycarbonate glazed into a Unistrut metal frame. A containment study for a high speed centrifuge is performed which includes the development of parameters for secondary containment design. The Unistrut/polycarbonate shield framing concept is presented including design details and proof testing procedures. The economical fabrication and modularity of the design indicates a usefulness for this shielding system in a wide variety of containment scenarios.

Solar heat gain inside a radiation-shielded forklift operator compartment can be a significant problem due to the ``greenhouse effect``. Battery power prohibits the use of a refrigerant type of air-conditioning system, which limits the interior temperature to be approximately equal to the outside ambient temperature through alternative cooling methods. A heat transfer analysis is performed to determine the amount of solar heat gain in this type of mobile vehicle shelter. Various results are presented that depend on exterior surface finish and temperature difference between inside and outside ambient. An amount of forced air flow along with several design recommendations are then specified to rid the compartment of this excess heat.

Finding new and improved means of cooling small electronic packages are of great importance to today's electronic packaging engineer. Thermal absorption through the use of a material which changes phase is an attractive alternative. Taking advantage of the heat capacity of a material's latent heat of fusion is shown to absorb heat away from the electronics, thus decreasing the overall temperature rise of the system. The energy equation is formulated in terms of enthalpy and discretized using a finite-difference method. A FORTRAN program to solve the discretized equations is presented which can be used to analyze heat conduction in a rectangular region undergoing an isothermal phase change. An analysis of heat transfer through a miniature radar electronic module cooled by a phase-change reservoir is presented, illustrating the method's advantages over conventional heat sinks. 41 refs., 11 figs., 2 tabs.