News - Ray W. Herrick Laboratories - Purdue University

Jeff Rhoads' team have developed a low-cost CO2 sensor that determines whether people are present in a room. This allows HVAC systems to save energy by not heating and cooling empty rooms.

For a time, Jonathan Ore thought his childhood dream of obtaining a PhD was dashed. But Purdue's online master's in mechanical engineering gave this working professional exactly what he needed. He loved it so much, that he came to campus to complete a PhD at Herrick Labs.

Residential buildings account for 20% of total energy consumption in the United States. If these homes were retrofitted with smart systems, which only condition the air if people are present, we would save 24-42% of these energy costs. David Warsinger published this research in the Journal of Building Engineering.

Andres Arrieta has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, their most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. His project is "The Mechanics of Hierarchically Multistable Metastructures."

Prof. Yan Chen has been working for years on redesigning airline cabins and other enclosed spaces to stop the spread of airborne viruses. Read about his latest efforts at Fast Company.

Herrick Labs is showcased in the latest issue of Lab Manager magazine, showcasing the flexibility of the Living Labs, and the importance of human-building interaction.

PhD student Riley Barta has developed a turbomachine expander that helps harvest previously wasted energy used in the process of moving air from high to low pressure. The device can be used as a control agent within existing heat pumps. Purdue is world-renowned in research of refrigeration and compressors.

Prof. Yan Chen studies how airborne viruses spread in enclosed environments like airplanes and cruise ships. Keeping coronavirus patients on board a cruise ship is the worst thing they could have done, because a cruise ship's HVAC system can't filter out the virus, and may end up spreading it even more.

Future long-term habitats on the Moon or Mars will have to be resilient against many hazards, including radiation, sandstorms, quakes, and meteorites. Prof. Shirley Dyke is the director of the Resilient Extra Terrestrial Habitats Institute (RETHi), a NASA-funded institute researching how to make these habitats resilient, self-monitoring, and serviceable autonomously. She discusses these challenges in the latest issue of Civil Engineering magazine.

Prof. Shirley Dyke announces two workshops focused on smart structures, both to be hosted at Purdue University in July 2020.