Blown Away by the Portland State University Wind Tunnel

On sunny May 18 I visited Portland State University (PSU) for an “Umbrella Tour”. They are so named because you usually need your umbrella to stay dry as you traipse to different parts of campus to see the cutting-edge research and community outreach that faculty is doing.

 I am a bit of an engineering geek due to my longstanding involvement with FIRST Robotics, (www.usfirst.org) so it is no surprise that my favorite part of the tour was getting to meet Assistant Professor Raúl Bayoán Cal and see a demonstration of the wind tunnel. Due to his boyish good-looks and demeanor I mistook him for a student tour guide, but there was no doubt about his expertise once we entered his lab. I was blown away by the sophistication of the work being done there and the hands-on opportunities for undergraduate students to be involved in research at the forefront of the sustainability cluster for which Portland is getting so much attention.

The custom-built wind tunnel has generated great excitement in Portland design circles, and has spurred new industry partnerships. Before the custom-built tunnel (which cost more than $500,000) was installed at PSU, most industry researchers had to travel to OSU for wind-tunnel experimentation.

Raúl Bayoán Cal’s area of research is focused on understanding hydrodynamic turbulence and complexity in fluid mechanics in general. He uses theoretical and experimental tools to assess the behavior of flow. Cal was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University prior to coming to Portland State University in 2009. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and a M.S. Degree in Experimental and Computational Turbulence from the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department at PSU (www.me.pdx.edu) is a dynamic place to study. Mechanical engineering applications are used in virtually every industry, every branch of government, and every type of utility, including aerospace, energy conversion, environmental design and management, chemical processing, manufacturing and electro-mechanical systems. The PSU curriculum is distinguished by its computer applications and emphasis on the design process.

After our tour stops I was treated to lunch with University President Wim Wiewel, who shared his vision for PSU. Some of those green dreams are already coming to  fruition with faculty additions such as  Raúl Bayoán Cal. By the way, I did get a lovely green PSU umbrella as a parting gift and I have needed it most days since.