Professor Qu accepted a post in the Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Hawai'i after receiving his Ph.D. from Purdue in 2004. His speciality is transport phenomena in small spaces, like boiling heat transfer in small channels. The experimental work is very specialized, and requires advanced 3-D numerical simulations to explain the results. To date, he has used a CFD program he wrote himself, based on code from the University of Minnesota, and run on his desktop PC. The runs take 2 - 3 days to produce results. His current project will look at the flows in Fuel Cells, which uses the same model equations, but with more variables. For this model, he will need the power of JAWS. One of the three graduate students he advises, Ruey Hwu, is using his UH Engagement Grant to use StarCD at Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) for the Fuel Cell model.
Professor Qu teaches Undergraduate Thermal Fluid Measurement and Design, Graduate Introduction to Fuel Cell Technology, and Boiling and Two-Phase Flow. His research is funded by local companies, NSF, and ACS.
This study at MHPCC is his first venture into the use of supercomputers. He is definitely someone to watch! And you can watch for the results of Ruey's work in future articles here on /hpc!
Read more about Prof Qu at http://me.hawaii.edu/faculty/qu.htm.
