Testing the Light Source Collimator Prototype for the Solar Simulator
Author: Stephen Pierson | Major: Mechanical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2022
My name is Stephen Pierson, and I am majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Back in the fall of 2021, I met my current mentor, Dr. Han Hu, and toured the Mechanical Engineering Department’s Nano Energy and Data-Driven Discovery (NED3) Laboratory where I would go on to do most of my research this semester and continue to work on other projects as a lab research assistant this summer. During this time, I met other students in my major interested in research, namely Jackson Marsh, Timothy Loftness, Landon Lemmons, and Matthew Buchanan, with whom I worked closely with on this project.
Funded by the Honors College Team Research Grant and ASGC SIT Grant, my team and I set out at the beginning of the Spring 2022 semester to research the viability of using solar energy to directly power 3D printing. The idea behind our research is inspired by the successful implementation of concentrated solar power in the energy industry and existing additive manufacturing processes, namely selective laser sintering (SLS). Our concept involves concentrating sunlight via lenses and harnessing that energy to directly sinter raw material into useful objects. Real-life applications include sending 3D printers equipped with this technology to human settlements in space so that scientists and settlers can produce parts for habitat construction, experiments, and instruments without needing to expend energy reserves or bring raw materials with them. In low-gravity environments (i.e., the Moon, asteroids, space stations, etc.), this technology could be particularly useful because in theory it would allow astronauts to manufacture parts essential to their mission on-demand, eliminate many hazards of traditional manufacturing, and reduce dependency on cost-ineffective resupply rockets.
I chose to do my first undergraduate research project on the topic of additive manufacturing because of the wild possibilities 3D printing makes possible. One of the reasons 3D printing is so revolutionary is that, through one method or another, just about any material can be used to 3D print with – look to present-day breakthroughs in printing functional organs as evidence. This led my team to wonder if we could leverage this versatility along with renewable energy to create an alternative 3D printing solution for ores mined in outer space where both energy and choice in manufacturing materials are limited. With the overall goal of a lab-scale proof-of-concept in mind, my responsibility was to research an indoor light source for sinter testing that can mimic the sunlight characteristics and intensity in various locations in the solar system. Others on my team developed the lens system for the project and studied 3D metal printing to outline a plan for implementing this technology into a future working prototype.
There were many challenges that I encountered in developing an artificial light source for lab testing. In order to accommodate a device capable of emulating solar light intensity over a sufficiently large area, a list of safety and power considerations would need to be taken into account. Such a design project was beyond the scope of what one undergraduate can accomplish in a semester, so the scope of our proof-of-concept model was modified after the stage of preliminary research so that a high-power light source would not be required for this semester. The main challenge after completing literature review remained to design a collimator, a device that conditions light from a source such that rays travel parallel to one another. The solution for collimating light that I arrived at uses a Fresnel lens, the same type commonly used in lighthouses to focus light across long distance, and the prototype I constructed demonstrates how combining this technique for collimation with a source that produces a light spectrum similar to that of the sun will satisfy the design requirements for conducting sintering experiments.
This research experience has helped me take big steps towards my long-term career goals in just a short amount of time. I’ve become proficient in the process of academic research, established a great working relationship with a mentor and group of peers who have similar research interests, and fostered an interest that’s taking me places I couldn’t have imagined six months ago. The research I’m actively working on in the NED3 laboratory this summer is about the impact manufacturing techniques have on the efficiency of microchannel heat sinks and two-phase heat transfer. This is incredibly exciting to me because it’s allowing me to experience important aspects of my field that are not covered in class and contribute to an area of intense research in the greater engineering community. I plan on applying to more grants to continue my work in the coming year with the long-term plan of producing a journal paper on my summer research and presenting at ASEE Midwest 2022 about implementing computer-aided manufacturing into the current undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum.