Thirteen Purdue University Northwest (PNW) faculty and staff members are being recognized by Purdue University’s Office of Research for impactful scholarly initiatives that have earned millions of dollars in external funding.

The Purdue-West Lafayette research office’s annual Seeds for Success Acorn Awards are presented to employees’ system-wide who have earned external sponsorship of $1 million or more for a research enterprise.

The 13 PNW faculty and staff members who have earned a 2024 award are leading initiatives spanning several research areas that address community needs in Northwest Indiana, from steel decarbonization and clean energy to cyber defense.

“We are delighted and proud that Purdue University is recognizing 13 PNW faculty and staff members with the Seeds for Success Acorn Awards for their dedicated efforts and success in securing external funding to advance impactful research and scholarship,” said PNW Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Marie T. Mora. “These projects will not only enhance the reputation of our university, but their impacts will also benefit residents of Northwest Indiana, the broader region and the nation.  As we continue to build our research infrastructure at PNW, these faculty and staff also serve as role models for our students and colleagues.”

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On October 16-18, CIVS Director Chenn Zhou presented at the 2024 European Coke and Ironmaking Congress (ECIC) in Bardolino, Italy. She presented “On the Influence Hydrogen-Bearing Injected Fuels in the Ironmaking Blast Furnace”. Co-authors of the paper include CIVS Graduate Research Assistant Samuel Nielson, CIVS Associate Director of Research Tyamo Okosun, CIVS Research Scientist Orlando Ugarte, and U.S. Steel collaborators Kosta Leontaras and Jason Entwistle.

Considerable focus has been placed upon the reduction of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, and as perhaps the most significant contributor of emissions from steelmaking, the blast furnace deserves careful consideration. Injected fuels have been utilized for decades to reduce blast furnace coke consumption, and hydrogen-bearing injected fuels can also meaningfully cut carbon emissions. Researchers at Purdue University Northwest’s (PNW) Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation (CIVS) have collaborated with members of the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC) to investigate the impacts of hydrogen-bearing injected fuels including H2 gas, natural gas, and waste plastic material on the performance of a North American blast furnace. Simulation results have provided a detailed exploration of how flame temperatures, coke rates, and other key conditions are impacted by varying rates of injection. The results can also be used as the basis for physics-based reduced-order models (ROMs) to quickly predict how a given furnace will respond to changing operating conditions.

The ECIC focused on the newest technologies in coke making, sintering, pelletizing, pyrolizing the biomasses and ironmaking (blast furnaces, direct reduction and carbon-based smelting processes). The 2050 goal of carbon neutrality and the related intensive efforts of the steel industry will significantly affect the technologies for iron ore reduction. In this perspective, the shortage of iron ores matching the requirement for direct reduction by gas and for melting in electric arc furnace makes important proposal of new technologies and devices that can ensure the carbon neutrality even for the coal based routes. The Congress focused on technologies that can achieve such a goal improving the efficiency of the existing process, applying the devices that avoid a net emission of green house gases and to point out new routes based on exploitation of biomasses whose net emission is intrinsically neutral.

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On October 5-9, 5 CIVS research projects were presented at the Materials Science & Technology (MS&T) Technical Meeting and Exhibition in Pittsburgh, PA. Below are the research titles that were presented at the meeting:

• “Combustion of Plastic Particles in a Blast Furnace Raceway – CFD Analysis” presented by Sowjanya Yelluripati
• “Impact of Steel Composition on Macro-Segregation of Carbon in Continuous Casting” presented by Bhuvanesh Nandipati
• “Investigating Hydrogen-Natural Gas Blending in a Reheating Furnace for Decarbonizing Steel Production” presented by Abhishek Kolakotla
• “Impact of Varied Oxygen Injection on Refining Process in an Industry-Scale EAF Through CFD Model” presented by Sathvika Kottapalli
• “Simulation of Steel Induction Heating with Adaptive Soaking Process” presented by Kiranchandru “KC” Lingeswaran

The Materials Science & Technology (MS&T) technical meeting and exhibition series is a long-standing, recognized forum for fostering technical innovation at the intersection of materials science, engineering, and application. At MS&T, you can learn from those who are on the cutting edge of their disciplines, share your work with the leading minds in your field, and build the valuable cross-disciplinary collaborations unique to this conference series.

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PNW NIPSCO Distinguished Professor of Engineering Simulation Chenn Zhou was recently featured as a “trailblazing woman” by the industry for the Association of Iron and Steel Technology (AIST).

Zhou, who also serves as director of PNW’s Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation (CIVS), cited AIST for “the incredible support it provides for collaboration within the industry.”

Read the Profile (PDF)

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On October 12, CIVS Director Chenn Zhou was the first plenary speaker presenting “Integration of Computational Simulation and Visualization for Industrial Applications” at the 2024 GLSIAM Annual Meeting in the CIVS Immersive Theater. The conference was organized by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at PNW on behalf of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. At the beginning of the conference, Chancellor Kenneth (Chris) Holford welcomed over 150 attendees from across the U.S. Following his welcome, PNW Provost Marie Mora, PNW CES Dean Bruce Berdanier, PNW Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics Chair Nicoleta Tarfulea and GLSIAM President Tamas Horvath provided opening remarks.

Dr. Zhou’s speech was very well received by the audience. Computational modeling and simulation can play a transformative role in Industry 4.0. By integrating advanced modeling and simulation techniques with cutting-edge visualization and AI tools, we can create a physics-based, data-driven digital twin type of virtual simulators of industrial processes. Such a simulator enables simulation-based smart manufacturing, empowering researchers, engineers, and operators to make quicker, more informed decisions in process design, optimization, troubleshooting, and operations. Additionally, it offers effective training tools for workforce development. In this talk an integrated, application-driven approach to developing and implementing these simulators will be outlined. Examples will be demonstrated for increasing energy efficiency, productivity, and product quality, as well as reducing CO2 emissions, operational downtime, and costs, ultimately improving the competitiveness of American manufacturing.

The conference also featured plenary speakers Hengguang Li from Wayne State University, Guang Lin from Purdue University, and L. Ridgway from University of Chicago. Throughout the day also included many breakout sessions from academic leaders.

The Great Lakes section of SIAM (GLSIAM) was formed in 1988, to serve Michigan, Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Southern Ontario, and the surrounding areas. It organizes its annual conferences around themes reflecting its members’ evolving interests within applied mathematics. Topics throughout the conference were related to applied and computational mathematics.

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On October 8-9, CIVS Associate Director for Research, Tyamo Okosun, delivered a Keynote Presentation “Digital Transformation for Ironmaking: An Integrated Virtual Blast Furnace for Operational Guidance and Process Improvement” at the AIST Digital Transformation Forum for the Steel Industry in Pittsburgh, PA.

Blast furnaces are a well-established which have been continually improved over more than a century of industrial use, meaning that modern optimization opportunities must often rely upon the implementation of digital technologies. The Integrated Virtual Blast Furnace (IVBF) represents a multi-faceted new approach to providing operators and engineers with recommendations for guidance and methods for quantifying and understanding the internal state of the process, enabling further optimization and decarbonization. This novel approach aims to provide rapid predictions of furnace performance under new operating conditions for engineers, process health indicators via indices based on data analytics, and insight into the process with a novel non-invasive casting rate imaging sensor.

This forum aimed to serve as a platform for industry experts, researchers and professionals to delve into the pivotal aspects of digital transformation within the steel industry. The primary objectives of the forum included fostering collaborative discussions, sharing innovative insights and exploring the latest developments that drive digital transformation in the steel industry. The forum included papers, panel discussions and real case studies.

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On October 8, 18 CIVS staff and students attended the AIST Midwest Chapter Kickoff Dinner at Avalon Manor in Merrillville. The Keynote Presentation was given by Traci Forrester, Executive Vice President, Environmental and Sustainability at Cleveland-Cliffs. She is also Vice President of AIST. She gave a very informative talk on Cleveland-Cliffs’ efforts and strategies on decarbonization and sustainability. She also advocated for AIST benefits and encouraged all to be active in the chapter. There were over 480 attendees at the kickoff dinner. Her talk was very informative and inspiring for CIVS students and staff.

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On September 27, 20 CIVS students and staff had a wonderful opportunity to visit ArcelorMittal Global R&D in East Chicago organized by PNW Society of Innovation and ArcelorMittal. The event included luncheon presentations and a lab tour to showcase state-of-art laboratories and a behind-the-scenes look at how ArcelorMittal is driving innovation in the workplace. The presentations discussed different projects ArcelorMittal is currently doing and presentations on four topics (Decarbonization, Steel Solutions, Advances in Steel Development using Digital Tools, and Magnelis).  During the lab tour, attendees visited different mechanical testing labs, such as tensile testing and formability testing. They also visited the small-scale sample manufacturing lab, electron microscopy, where they could see nano scale magnification of steel samples.

ArcelorMittal is a long-time collaborator with CIVS and a charter member of the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC).

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On September 27, CIVS welcomed Dr. Doris Oke and Dr. Saurajyoti Kar from Argonne National Laboratory to be our guest speakers at the weekly CIVS Seminar held in the CIVS Immersive Theater. Drs. Oke and Kar are Energy Systems Analysts in the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis division. Attendees included CIVS students and staff, PNW College of Engineering students and staff, and external industry collaborators.

Their seminar was titled “Life Cycle Assessment: Concept, Methods and Applications”. The urgency to reduce climate change and its impact has led to increased research efforts on alternative technologies that can reduce emissions across different sectors of the economy. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an important technique to quantify the environmental impacts of entire life cycle of a product. As various options for decarbonization emerge, (LCA) continues to be a relevant tool to provide comprehensive and objective assessment of their environmental impacts and sustainability in comparison to the baseline fossil technologies. This seminar covered the general concept about LCA, the methodologies and applications and provide a glimpse of the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Technologies (GREET) LCA modeling tool developed and maintained at Argonne National Laboratory.  Excellent feedback was received from the audience.

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On September 10-12, CIVS Senior Research Scientist John (Jack) Moreland attended the NSF EEC Grantees Conference in Washington, D.C. to meet with other researchers and discuss CIVS’s ongoing RET project (Research Experience for Teachers). There were several hundred attendees present. Part of the conference involved breakout sessions with other RET programs from around the country and the related REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) to share information and learn from each other to help improve outcomes for teachers.

The two-day conference provided a forum for Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) Principal Investigators (PIs) and team leaders to learn, explore, and share ideas that will promote innovation in engineering education research and practice. The conference also provided an opportunity for EEC grantees to gather and reflect on questions to interrogate current engineering curriculum, along with individual and collective efforts at addressing questions with a caring and human-centered approach.

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