News - Ray W. Herrick Laboratories - Purdue University

This brick circle on Purdue's campus is called the "clapping circle"... when you stand in the middle of it and clap, you hear an odd squeak. Thanks to the research of professor Stuart Bolton and his acoustics students, now we know why.

What if paint could cool off a building enough to not need air conditioning? Xiulin Ruan has pioneered radiative cooling paint; instead of absorbing sunlight, it radiates the heat back into space. This actually cools surfaces below ambient temperature, something paint has never done before.

The School of Mechanical Engineering is sad to announce that Raymond Cohen, professor and former director of Herrick Labs, has passed away.

Today, Herrick Labs is the foremost academic HVAC lab in the world. But when it opened in 1958, its focus was on how livestock reacted to refrigeration! Don Giffels (MSME 1959) was one of the first graduate students at Herrick, and shares his reflections.

Purdue and the US Army are collaborating on a three-year project to modernize their use of propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics. Principal investigator Jeff Rhoads is part of the Purdue Energetics Research Center, a leader in the academic study of energetic materials.

"Flat pack furniture" may soon have a new meaning. Purdue researchers have developed a 3D printing method that emulates the switchable bistability of the Venus flytrap plant. This breakthrough in material science may soon inspire flat objects that snap into their final stable form with very little external force.

PhD student Leon Brendel has developed a new scroll compressor design for refrigeration, where metal-on-metal sliding is reduced, and efficiency increased.

Airlines have been leaving the middle seats empty on many of their flights. Does this actually help stop the spread of COVID-19? The answer is complicated, as Prof. Yan Chen explains in this video from Vox.

If tractor-trailers could platoon (one truck autonomously following another), the aerodynamic drag alone would save up to 10% total fuel costs, as well as increasing safety.

J. Stuart Bolton, professor of mechanical engineering, has received the Per Bruel Gold Medal for Noise Control and Acoustics from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).