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Purdue Expands Jet Propulsion Lab

New $8.2 million facility will aid in research studies.

Aiming to improve the fuel efficiency and emissions profile of jet engines, Purdue University has announced an expansion and improvement of its Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories. “This expansion will boost Zucrow’s research collaborations with leading firms and provide additional educational opportunities to prepare our students for jobs in industry, academia and the public sector,” said Leah Jamieson, Purdue’s John A. Edwardson dean of engineering.

Zucrow currently comprises six facilities on a 24-acre site. A new 9,600-square-foot facility, which is expected to cost $8.2 million, will be added with an expected completion date in 2017. The facilities are located west of the main campus.

The lab currently has two test cells, one for rocket testing and the other for turbine engines. Five test cells will be added within the new building to allow companies to have their own research space to prevent compromising proprietary secrets.

The new building will also have a 2,000-square-foot laser lab to study jet engine combustion, which will allow engineers to study what happens inside the jet engine’s combustor. “We use lasers to measure the properties of the flow inside the combustor such as temperature, chemical species, flow velocity and heat release,” said Carson Slabaugh, a research scientist who completed his doctoral thesis at Zucrow.

In addition to the new facility, Purdue plans to renovate the current high-pressure lab and add office space for its faculty and students. Currently more than 90 graduate students are working in the labs. A new air heater was also recently installed enabling heat up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit at a pressure of up to 850 pounds per square inch, which will allow for better experiments.

The majority of the funds for the expansion and improvements will come from a recent $40 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

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