School of Engineering Civil Engineering Professor Gord Lovegrove is among the recipients of the 2020 Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia President’s Award. The 2020 President’s Award for Community Service recognizes his community contributions and research related to developing sustainable communities.

The President’s Awards are British Columbia’s top awards for professional engineers and professional geoscientists, and have been developed to recognize the exemplary and outstanding professional, technical, and community contributions made by members of Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia. The Community Service Award recognizes substantial contribution of community service, through leadership and dedication to the well-being of one’s community.

As a long-standing champion for his community and the environment, Lovegrove strives to make his community a more welcoming and accessible place for all.

Fresh Outlook Foundation’s Founder and CEO, Joanne De Vries, says “Gord not only excels professionally, he also literally walks the talk in his personal life.” De Vries points to Lovegrove’s advocacy and leadership in establishing several leading-edge multi-sector programs to protect and promote the environment.

Lovegrove joined the School of Engineering in 2005, and immediately connected with community stakeholders who shared his passion for the environment, community and sustainability.  Through these partnerships, Dr. Lovegrove has been active with the City of Kelowna’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy and with BC transit planning.  He is a member of Kelowna’s Intentional Community Living group that is planning and designing the Okanagan’s first co-housing demonstration project, in collaboration with Interior Health Authority researchers.

He has also served in a variety of volunteer capacities for Kelowna’s Fresh Outlook Foundation, Kelowna’s Okanagan Car Share Co-Op, TRB Bicycle Committee and the Christian Service Brigade.

Roger Liegmann, the Senior Paster of Westmount Church, describes Lovegrove this way: “Every conversation I have personally had with Gord have involved his passion and belief in supporting our city. He is a consistent advocate for ways our city can improve and become a better place to live.”

Courtesy EGBC Announcement

Lovegrove’s teaching and research focus is on using innovative engineering approaches to plan and design communities that sustain quality of life while protecting our environment.  In 2017, Dr. Lovegrove instructed over two-hundred students in three courses connected to the environment (ENGR 305 Engineering Economics, ENGR 435 Transportation System Design and ENGR 449 Sustainable Community Design).  He also created the first Go Global course for the School of Engineering, one that enables UBC students and professionals to study the planning and design of new communities in Holland.  The course teaches participants the importance of protecting the environment, maximizing green space, and achieving bio-diversity, all while achieving high quality of life through integrated housing, transportation choices, and coordinated, focused growth.

According to EGBC’s announcement “whether it’s through his teaching, his advocacy, or simply his contagious enthusiasm for creating a happier, healthier future, Gord has made a lasting impact on his community.”

For more information about Lovegrove’s teaching and research visit https://engineering.ok.ubc.ca/about/contact/gordon-lovegrove/

As power grids are increasingly being impacted by climate change factors such as forest fires and severe weather, UBC researchers are investigating ways to make power systems more resilient.

Electricity distribution is a complex inter-connected series of systems and grids that have their power traditionally supplied from a main power generation hub.

UBC Okanagan researchers are developing methods to improve reliability and performance through establishing mini-systems, called microgrids, within these larger distribution systems that can work in concert with the larger system but also be self-sustaining using locally distributed generation resources, such as small hydro power plants, micro turbines and solar and wind generation.

The self-sustaining piece is key according to Yuri Rodrigues, a UBC Okanagan electrical engineering doctoral student and study co-author. “Whether it is a fire that cuts off the system or a windstorm, having islanded microgrid systems can literally weather the storm until repairs can be done.”

Through a series of calculations based on advanced monitoring sensors, called phasor measurement units (PMUs), the microgrid can reliably distribute the locally available power and energy retained prior to being cut-off from the larger system, until the microgrid is reconnected. These calculations can be quite complicated as they differ depending on whether the power entering the microgrid originates from renewable or non-renewable sources.

The calculations are handled by automated controllers that continuously analyze the microgrids’ available resources and make adjustments to ensure consistent power distribution, frequency and voltage regulation.

Rodrigues along with School of Engineering assistant professors Morad Abdelaziz and Liwei Wang tested the automated controllers in a number of scenarios derived from microgrids being disconnecting from the main grid while also dealing with possible local system failures, e.g. loss of local generators and communication channels.

“Innovations in the development of automated controllers are making microgrids more feasible, and as climate change factors continue to strain our power grids, now might be the time to seriously consider transitioning to the safeguards of microgrids,” says Rodrigues.

The research is published in the Journal IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, and was funded by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

UBC researchers have laid the ground-work to improve gas turbine engine design through debunking a 40-year old theory used as a basis of understanding how combustion is calculated.

“For many decades, we’ve designed gas turbine combustors based on a simplified assumption: premixed flames burn in thin surfaces” explains Sina Kheirkhah, an assistant professor and lead investigator on this research. “With these latest findings, we demonstrate under realistic gas turbine flow-relevant conditions, premixed flames can be in fact relatively thick. This is important as it allows for accurate calculation of fuel burn rates in gas turbines, which has implications for design and development of future gas turbines.”

According to Kheirkhah, the previous (thin flame) assumption cannot reconcile the amount of fuel fed to the engine being equal to the amount that is actually burnt. This has led to a question of: where is the extra fuel going? Is it lost? With the new observations, the researchers have determined there is no lost fuel.

Kheirkhah says their findings explain where the lost fuel is potentially going, and why thick flame surfaces form in engine flow-relevant conditions.

Teaming up with the Natural Research Council’s Gas Turbine Lab in the Aerospace Research Centre in Ottawa, one of Kheirkhah’s PhD students, Sajjad Mohammadnejad, was able to use three high-power lasers synched with 4 high-resolution cameras, to answer this combustion science problem.

Although this research focuses on natural gas combustion, it is part of a collaboration with FortisBC to better understand the implications of hydrogen-enrichment on natural gas combustion.  Hydrogen-enriched natural gas can reduce emissions, and potentially improve efficiency of appliances and power generation gas turbines.

In their next steps, Kheirkhah’s team will incorporate hydrogen into experiments with the goal of identifying what role the “lost” fuel plays in the burning rate. Understanding the answer to this problem will lead the way towards improving the design of next generation gas turbine engines.

The research is published in the journal Combustion and Flame with support by FortisBC and the Mitacs Accelerate program.

PhD candidate Levi Bieber develops advanced high-power converter topologies and controls to enable the integration of large-scale renewable energy sources into the AC power grid.  Since power generated from renewable energy sources provides inconsistent amounts of power, researchers like Bieber are investigating ways to adapt existing infrastructures to handle fluctuating levels of power within systems that prefer consistent power.

After completing his BASc at the School of Engineering, Bieber jumped into a master’s program with ambitions to collaborate with Montreal-based real-time simulator company OPAL-RT, and then, after graduating, transitioning into the private sector research and development to design new and more efficient ways of transmitting power over long distances.  Those aspirations have shifted slightly, as Bieber has set his sights on a PhD.

Bieber transitioned from his master’s degree in electrical engineering at UBC’s Okanagan campus into a fast-track PhD in August 2019, and recently won the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The $105,000 award is presented annually to top-ranked, post-graduate students based on their academic excellence, research potential, communication skills, and leadership abilities.

“Research with my supervisor Dr. Liwei Wang has been an immense driver of personal growth,” explains Bieber. “But while self-discipline is what can get you started, it has been the continual support and perseverance of both Dr. Wang and my fiancée Miya that has enabled me to put in the effort that has led me to where I am today.”

Bieber has had plenty of success along the way.  He was recognized as a UBC Faculty of Applied Science Rising Star in 2018, and received a Best Paper Award at the IEEE IEMCOM 2019 Conference.

“Levi is one of the highest-caliber and truly exceptional students that I have worked with,” says Wang. “He has demonstrated strong potential to make significant technology breakthrough in the area.”

Together with Wang, Bieber is working on developing highly efficient and increasingly compact power converters that help convert direct current to alternating current: a major challenge in integrating large-scale renewable energy sources into conventional power grids.

A total of nine UBC faculty members have been announced by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) as Fellows and as Members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2020.

Abbas Milani is one of two faculty named as new members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists is Canada’s first national system of multidisciplinary recognition for the emerging generation of Canadian intellectual leadership.

Abbas S. Milani (Professor, School of Engineering / Director, Materials and Manufacturing Research Institute) is a leading expert in modeling, simulation, and multicriteria optimization of advanced composite/biocomposite materials and their manufacturing processes. His interdisciplinary work links theoretical concepts to real-world applications, thereby enabling innovations for industry across Canada in manufacturing high-quality and cost-effective products. He is a Killam Laureate and the founding Director of the Materials and Manufacturing Research Institute at UBC. He has authored over 300 publications, including five books.

The 2020 Fellows and Members will be welcomed into the RSC at a celebration in November.

New research from UBC Okanagan could allow lettuce farmers to better identify the risk of contamination in irrigation for their crops.

Their findings suggests a new model to analyzing water quality in recreation, drinking and agricultural applications could better protect public health.  In the case of agriculture, the model could identify possible contamination through the supply chain process.

According to the lead researcher, Nicolas Peleato, the new modelling approach can predict microbial water quality with high accuracy in a fraction of the time needed for current monitoring methods.  “This approach of nowcasting or empirical modelling incorporates variables such as environmental and weather determinants to provide real-time accurate information.”

Identifying dangerous organisms like pathogens in natural waters can be challenging either because they have low concentrations or appear in water sources in non-uniform ways.  Current methods for monitoring waterborne pathogens are expensive and can take 24-hours or more to get results.

The UBC researchers have created a new model that can assess dangerous microorganisms in water more accurately because the model takes into account both weather and water quality measurements.  The model is probability-based such that it also allows to identify uncertainty in the prediction.

To study the accuracy of the model, Peleato and his team analyzed water quality measures and historical weather data.  “Our results indicate that by combining easy water quality measures and weather data, we can predict what microbial levels will be with significant accuracy,” says Peleato.

Data generated from this method can then be used by regulators and water users to make informed risk-based management and treatment plans.

The research is published in the journal Water Research.

Advanced manufacturing team works to eliminate potentially damaging processing flaws

Researchers at UBC’s Okanagan campus have created a custom-built device to assess the inter-ply resistance of peculiarly shaped, laminated fibre composite structures used to manufacture aerospace parts.

Woven composite materials are becoming more and more prevalent in the fabrication of aerospace composites because they are lighter than conventional materials and often easier to manufacture, says Abbas Milani, a mechanical engineering professor at the School of Engineering

Composite materials offer reduced weight while maintaining high strength and stiffness, as well as improved fatigue resistance when compared to a range of metallic counterparts. However, when multi-layers of woven fibers are formed into geometrically complex shapes, they can warp and wrinkle due to friction and compaction within the manufacturing process.

“We carefully study the entire manufacturing process to better understand the factors that can lead to a wrinkling defect in the final part,” says Milani, who is also the principal investigator of the Okanagan Node of the Composites Research Network. “As composite fibre plies are consolidated with a mixture of polymers, we investigate how each ply interacts with its neighbours and how it responds to the various stages of processing.”

Milani and his team have been developing custom-made characterization instruments that simulate the various stages of the fabric composites manufacturing processes.  The goal is to determine how potential defects—which are often hidden—are formed within the final product, and how they can be mitigated at a minimum cost. By adding variables such as stretching and compression along with temperature and viscosity, the researchers now have more tools to investigate ways to improve complex composite structures.

“Results show us that inter-ply friction is one of the main drivers behind fiber-path defects such as wrinkling which deteriorates the mechanical properties of the final composite part,” says Armin Rashidi, the lead PhD student in this research.

Moving forward the team will feed the results into a numerical simulation tool that paves the way toward a reliable virtual framework to help with the prediction of wrinkling defects in woven composites.

“The outcome of this research can eventually be used to investigate a variety of processing conditions and manipulated scenarios to assess their impact on the quality of the final product,” says Rashidi. “And ultimately use these optimization schemes to create defect-free composite parts”.

The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada with assistance from Boeing Canada, and published in the Journal Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing.

Shaylene Dekock-Kruger (BASc ’20, Electrical) is an Electrical Designer at BC Hydro.

Describe your journey into engineering.

Before wanting to become an engineer, I actually wanted to become a doctor so that I could bring health care into my indigenous community. However, after my first year of university in UBC Okanagan’s Science program, I started learning about engineering and I was gravitating towards wanting to learn more about mathematics, physics and technology. The following year I began my first year of engineering and in my second year of engineering I decided to specialize in electrical engineering because I loved learning about circuit theory. I thought electricity was the best to study because it’s not necessarily something you can see, but it’s there and it’s what powers everything in our lives today.

What inspired you to go into engineering?

I went into engineering for three main reasons. The first reason being because I wanted a career where I could challenge my mind and apply my math, science and physics knowledge. The second reason being because I wanted to work with technology and/or the energy sector. The third reason being because it is a good job and it provides you with financial security.

Why did you choose UBC Okanagan?

I chose UBC Okanagan because I grew up in Penticton, BC and wanted to be far enough away that it justified moving out for the first time but close enough that I could visit my family and friends without any hassle. I am so happy I chose UBC Okanagan because it had the perfect campus size

Favourite courses(s)/ instructor(s) during your time at UBC Okanagan?

I had many favourite courses and instructors at UBC Okanagan. Some of my favourite instructors include Dr. Holzman, Dr. Najjaran, Dr. Wang and Dr. Metcalfe just to name a few. I really enjoyed how passionate each instructor was and how they were able to integrate their research into the courses to show how the courses we were learning about were applied in real world applications.

Describe how you found your current role.

I  found my current role in somewhat of a unique way. In my last two years of university I received scholarships from BC Hydro. When I was going into my final year of university,  I decided to reach out to BC Hydro and see if I could do my UBC Engineering Capstone Project in collaboration with them. After working with one of the principal engineers from the company on my UBC Engineering Capstone Project and learning more about the company – I decided to put my application into BC Hydro for their Engineer-in-Training program. Not long after I submitted my application, I was invited to a few rounds of interviews and eventually landed my role in my home department, which is substation design.

How did your education at UBC Okanagan prepare you for this role?

My education at UBC Okanagan taught me how to think critically and problem solve. My biggest teaching was learning how to be given a project or problem (that might seem intimidating at first) and breaking it up into smaller solvable components and then putting those components together in the end to create a solution. I apply this in my current job every day.

What is the best advice you’d received to this point?  What advice do you have for aspiring engineers?

The best advice that I have received at this point would probably have to be ‘there is no better time than right now to get things done.’ I like this advice because it motivates me to create a checklist of tasks that I need to do in the present so I can enjoy my free time in the future without thinking of a list of tasks that should have been completed.

My advice for aspiring engineers is to take the necessary pre-requisite courses they need to get into an accredited engineering program. As well, do lots of research about the type of engineering they want to specialize in. There are lots of great online resources to learn about the different types of engineering and the type of industry that they could be working in.

What does the future hold for you?

As of right now, career-wise I plan to continue working as an electrical designer in BC Hydro’s substations and working towards obtaining my professional engineering designation by the end of 2020. In terms of extracurricular involvement, I will continue to be involved in supporting and leading indigenous STEM outreach initiatives.

Dr. Rehan Sadiq’s appointment as Executive Associate Dean of the School of Engineering has been extended by five years effective July 1, 2020.  The announcement was jointly made this week by Ananya Mukherjee Reed, UBC Okanagan Provost and Vice President, Academic, and James Olson, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science.

Dr. Sadiq is a Professor in the School of Engineering at UBC Okanagan and was appointed Associate Dean of the School of Engineering on September 1, 2015.

In recognition of Dr. Sadiq’s role as Acting Dean in the absence of the Dean of Applied Science and his broader role and responsibility within the UBC Okanagan environment, his appointment was changed to Executive Associate Dean in April 2019. In this role, Dr. Sadiq has made significant contributions to the School and to the UBC Okanagan campus. His exceptional leadership, dedication and tireless efforts to ensure the success of the School has earned him the respect and trust of faculty, staff and students.

The School of Engineering is pleased to announce that Dr.Sumi Siddiqua has been appointed as  Associate Director, Graduate Studies commencing July 1, 2020.

“We wish to thank Dr. Klukas for his contributions in this role,” says School Director Mina Hoorfar, “and we look forward to the continued success of our graduate students under Dr. Siddiqua’s leadership.”

Dr. Sdidiqua is an associate professor of Civil Engineering who leads the CFI-funded Advanced Geomaterials Testing Lab.  She and her team investigate innovative solutions for ground-related environmental problems in the areas of nuclear waste repositories, energy pipelines, chemical stabilization of road subgrade materials, soil nano-particles, soil-water chemistry and the reuse of industry by-products.

Siddiqua is familiar with the inner workings of the College of Graduate Studies as she represents the School of Engineering on Graduate Council.

“I’m excited to get started working closely with our graduate students to ensure they continue unencumbered on their academic journeys,” says Siddiqua.

For more information about graduate studies at the School of Engineering, visit https://engineering.ok.ubc.ca/programs-admissions/grad/ and/or https://engineering.ok.ubc.ca/student-resources/graduate/