By: John Roberts
The students and faculty of Georgia Southern University have already reaped some benefits of the new Engineering and Research Building that opened earlier this year.
The more than 80,000 square foot building began operations back in January for more space and opportunities for research, learning, and production for mostly engineering programs, but is able to accommodate to different needs.
It also includes rooms for conference and large seminar that could be used by other departments, but for the several corporate partners with the university.
Masoud Davari, an assistant professor who directs the Laboratory for Advanced Power Systems in the new building, said that the building has definitely benefited in there being space for this equipment, the ability to conduct state-of-the-art research and testing, but is still in need of improvement.
"More pieces of equipment are required," said Davari.
The Laboratory for Advanced Power Systems allows for modeling and hardware-in-the-loop testing of these systems over a range of several voltage levels.
Essentially, Davari and other engineers are able to make scaled-down test versions of their power systems, and in this lab run tests with real-time situations to see if the controller of the system responds to situations, and if the actual model itself as a whole works and functions.
The lab contains $350,000 worth of this equipment from major company Real-Time Digital Simulation Technologies, which includes new technology called NovaCor.
According to RTDS Technologies, the NovaCor has almost three-times the simulation capacity of a previous simulator made by RDTS.
The real-time digital simulator in this building at Georgia Southern is able run with more capacity, more capability, and better time efficiency than most competitors.
Including this lab, there are eight different types of lab spaces dedicated to electrical, civil, manufacturing, and mechanical engineering.
The building has in addition three clean rooms. According to Angstrom Technology, clean rooms are high-cost spaces meant to be controlled environments to eliminate any factors that could pollute an experiment or research.
These rooms circulate outside air through a series of multiple filters, and this air is that set to the specifications that the scientist desires.
Cleans rooms are essential for work that involves as much control of an environment as possible, and the new building puts Georgia Southern at a high-level of competition with three in the facility.
The addition of these state-of-the-art technologies in the labs in the new building has now added the priority for more equipment to add to the new space.
Caleb Broome, electrical engineering student, said with all being said, the building is off to a great start.
"It will take another semester or two for people to become more acquainted with the building and for more lab equipment and classes to be moved there," said Broome.
So far, more than 50 courses, labs, and studios have been in the building in its first semester.
Isaac Wilson, a senior electrical engineering major and student in the electric machines lab, said the new labs are spacious, function, and good looking.
"This is great because the engineering building is quite small for the amount of content that used to be crammed within its walls," said Wilson.
Wilson has taken advantage of the amenities that the new building brought, but also pointed out areas of needed growth.
"I would say a word describing the new building is unfinished," said Wilson, "It seems to me the school declared the building open and ready for classes when there is still a lot of things being moved, fized, and changed all around the premise."
In fall semester, the Engineering and Research will add its number of scheduled class, labs, and studios to more than 64.
For more information, see the link here.