Engineering undergrads claim top two spots at regional rocket science competition

It’s common to hear NASA engineers referred to as “rocket scientists,” both for their area of study and their noted genius. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston served as host to the 2010 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Region IV Student Conference, welcoming some of the best of tomorrow’s aerospace engineers for a competition earlier this spring.

Baylor students walked away with the competition’s top two undergraduate prizes, beating out representatives from 11 other top universities across the southwest (including Texas, Texas A&M and Rice). Senior mechanical engineering majors Lance Case and Neil Jordan (pictured) won first prize in the undergraduate category for their paper, entitled “Effect of Dimple Depth on Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Rectangular Channel (AR = 3:1) with Hemispherical Dimples.” Advised by Dr. Lesley Wright, the pair won a trip to Orlando next January for the annual AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting where they will again present their work.

Another senior, Michael Clemenson, claimed second place behind his classmates for his paper, “A PIV Investigation of the Effect of Freestream Turbulence Intensity on the Jet Structure of a Double Row Film Cooling Geometry.” Clemenson did his work with Wright and Dr. Steve McClain.

Sic ’em, Baylor rocket scientists aerospace engineers!