Welcome
Our group studies dynamics of gases and plasmas with aerospace applications. We are located in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Missouri S&T.
Toomey Hall, home of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department
News
| April 10, 2023 |
[NEW SITE!] We are moving our group website to the new host domain at SITES.MST.EDU/PLASMA [link]! |
| March 3, 2023 | Our team led by Jacob Ortega made into the finalist for the NASA BIG Idea Challenge 2023 (Lunar Forge) [link]! Check out the feature story at NASA.gov. [link] |
| February 21, 2023 | Dr. Han gave an invited talk titled "Aerospace Plasma Research at Missouri S&T: From Space Propulsion to Lunar Exploration" at the monthly AIAA St. Louis Section Technical Specialist Meeting held at Berkeley, MO. |
| January 23-27, 2023 | Our group attended the hybrid in-person and virtual AIAA SciTech Forum 2023 held at National Harbor, MD and online. David presented our paper titled "Charging of Irregularly-Shaped Dust Grains near Surfaces in Space". |
| January 23, 2023 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Xiaoming He of Mathematics and titled "Fully-Kinetic Particle Simulations of Plasma Charging at Lunar Craters under Severe Conditions" got accepted by AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets!! |
| January 17, 2023 | Lucas Scott joined our group as a M.S. student. Welcome! |
| January 16, 2023 | Mr. Peter Bachle joined our group as a Senior Research Associate. Welcome! |
| December 12-16, 2022 | David attended and presented our work titled "Fully-Kinetic Particle Simulations of Plasma Charging at Lunar Craters under Average and Severe Solar Wind Conditions" at AGU Fall Meeting 2022 held at Chicago, IL. |
| December 8, 2022 | Dr. Han was recognized as the College of Engineering and Computing Dean's Scholar for AY 2022-2024 at Missouri S&T. |
| November 2-3, 2022 | Dr. Han attended and presented at the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) Fall Meeting 2022 held at the University of Texas at El Paso and online. |
| October 25, 2022 | Josh successfully defended his M.S. thesis titled "Numerical Investigations of 2-D Magnetic Nozzles on Plasma Plumes". Congratulations to Josh! |
| October 7, 2022 | Dr. Han gave an invited talk (virtual) titled "Aerospace Plasma Research at Missouri S&T: From Space Propulsion to Lunar Exploration" at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. |
| October 5, 2022 | Aaron and Easton both received NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium's Undergraduate Research Internship scholarship. Congratulations! |
| October 1-2, 2022 | David, Aaron, and Easton presented our work at the 7th Annual Meeting of SIAM Central States Section held at the Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK. The title of David's talk was "Kinetic Simulations of Charging of Irregularly-Shaped Dust Grains in Space Plasmas". The title of Aaron and Easton's talk was "Kinetic Modeling of Electrostatic Transport of Lunar Regolith Particles with Applications to In-Situ Resource Utilization". |
| August 30, 2022 | A project, titled "Chemical Hazards Mitigation through Cold Plasma Treatment and Shielding" and in collaboration with Dr. Yue-Wern Huang (Biological Sciences) and Dr. Marek Locmelis (Geosciences and Geology) of MST, is selected for funding by Army Research Laboratory. |
| August 25, 2022 | A project, titled "Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: Pilot: Research Workforce Development for Deep Learning Systems in Advanced GPU Cyberinfrastructure" and in collaboration with Dr. Xin Liang (CS) and Dr. Tony Luo (CS) of MST and colleagues at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, is selected for funding by NSF. |
| August 23-25, 2022 | Dr. Han attended the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG)) held in Laurel, MD and online. |
| August 22, 2022 | As the Fall 2022 semester starts, our groups is growing bigger - two new Ph.D. students, Emmanuel Wie-Addo and Kolawole Adesina, will join us in the Fall. Welcome! |
| August 15-19, 2022 | Dr. Han attended the 2nd Annual NASA-APL Lunar ISRU, Excavation, and Construction Technology Review held at Houston, TX and online. |
| July 19-21, 2022 | Dr. Han attended the 2022 NASA Exploration Science Forum, held in-person and virtually at the University of Colorado Boulder. |
| July 4-8, 2022 | Dr. Han attended the 32nd International Symposium on Rarefied Gas Dynamics (RGD32) and gave a presentation titled "Kinetic Particle Simulations of Plasma Charging and Dust Transport near the Lunar Terminator" (Special Session on Dust in Lunar Exploration). |
| June 19-23, 2022 | Dr. Han attended the 37th International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC 2022) held at Boston/MIT. |
| June 15, 2022 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Grace Yan of Civil Engineering and Prof. Xiaoming He of Mathematics and titled "Kinetic Particle Simulations of Plasma and Dust Environments at Robotic Construction Sites near the Lunar Terminators" got accepted by ASCE Journal of Aerospace Engineering! |
| June 12-15, 2022 | David presented a poster titled "Kinetic Particle Simulations of Charging of Irregularly-Shaped Dust Grains in Low Temperature Collisionless Plasmas" at the 2022 Joint Conference on Electrostatics (ESA 2022), Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. |
| June 3, 2022 | Six talented UG students - Kevin Marshall, Nick Graham, Easton Ingram, Aaron Berkhoff, and Kostas Kakadiaris of MST, and Tykerria Fowler of Benedict College (through MST's Summer Engineering Research Academy) - joined our group for summer research projects. Welcome! |
| June 2, 2022 | Jianxun successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled "Fully Kinetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma-Surface-Dust Interactions for Lunar Exploration". Congratulations to Dr. Zhao! |
| May 22-26, 2022 | Jianxun and David presented our two studies at the 49th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS 2022) held at Seattle, WA and online. Jianxun's talk was titled "Development of a Fully Kinetic Particle Simulation Code for Coupled Plasma-Dust Transport". David's poster was titled "Kinetic Particle Simulations of Charging of Irregularly-Shaped Dust Grains in Low Temperature Collisionless Plasmas". |
| April 20, 2022 | Our case study paper co-authored with Prof. Grace Yan of Civil Engineering and titled "Tornado-induced Structural Damage based on Reconnaissance Surveys of 2019 Jefferson City, MO Tornado and Previous Notable Tornadoes" got accepted by Natural Hazards Review! |
| April 4-8, 2022 | Jianxun and David presented our work titled "Development of a fully kinetic particle simulation code for coupled plasma-dust transport" at the 16th Spacecraft Charging and Technology Conference (SCTC). |
| March 16, 2022 | Jacob has been awarded the Kummer Innovation and Entrepreneurship Doctoral Fellowship to study Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering in the Fall! Congratulations! |
| February 28, 2022 | Dr. Han gave an invited talk titled "Kinetic Particle Simulations of Plasma Charging and Dust Transport near the Lunar Terminator" at Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) Extreme Environments - Space Weather / Plasma Environments group meeting. |
| February 18, 2022 | A project on Moon mining - use magnetic and electrostatic technologies to more efficiently separate calcium- and aluminum-containing minerals from the lunar regolith - led by Dr. Leslie Gertsch, is selected for funding by NASA. [link] |
| February 12, 2022 | Our paper first-authored by David and titled "Weak Scaling of the Parallel Immersed Finite Element Particle-in-Cell (PIFE-PIC) Framework with Lunar Plasma Charging Simulations" got accepted by the journal Computational Particle Mechanics! [link] |
| January 3-7, 2022 | Our group attended the hybrid in-person and virtual AIAA SciTech Forum 2022. David and Jianxun did a great job presenting our papers on the numerical modeling and simulation front! |
| November 5, 2021 | Dr. Han is awarded FY 2022 AFOSR YIP. [link] |
| October 29-30, 2021 | Jianxun and David presented at the Midwest Numerical Analysis Day (MWNAD) 2021 held at Rolla, MO. Jianxun's talk was on "Kinetic particle modeling of plasma charging and dust transport near the lunar terminator". David's talk was on "Strong and Weak Scaling Performance of the Parallel Immersed Finite Element Particle-in-Cell (PIFE-PIC) Framework". [link] |
| October 1, 2021 | Our paper first-authored by Josh and titled "Numerical Investigations of 2-D Planar Magnetic Nozzle Effects on Pulsed Plasma Plumes" got accepted by the The Aeronautical Journal! |
| September, 2021 | Jacob Ortega joined our group. Welcome! |
| September 2, 2021 | Our paper first-authored by Jianxun and titled "Photoelectron Sheath and Plasma Charging on the Lunar Surface: Semianalytic Solutions and Fully-Kinetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations" got accepted by the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science! [link] |
| June 30, 2021 | David Lund is awarded a NASA fellowship through the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO)! |
| June 22, 2021 | Our proposal titled "Ultrafine Inorganic Particle Formation in Plasma-Assisted Combustion" is selected for funding by NSF. [link] |
| June 16, 2021 | A project titled "Multiscale Computational Modeling of Dusty Plasmas Near Space Surfaces", in collaboration with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is selected for funding by NASA. [link] |
| June 9, 2021 | Our proposal titled "Collaborative Research: Lab-Data-Enabled Modeling, Numerical Methods, and Validation for a Three-Dimensional Interface Inverse Problem for Plasma-Material Interactions" is selected for funding by NSF. [link] |
| April 30, 2021 | Jianxun Zhao successfully passed the Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam. Congratulations! |
| March 8, 2021 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Yan of Civil Engineering and titled "A review of approaches to simulate windborne debris dynamics in wind fields" got accepted by the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics! [link] |
| February 22, 2021 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. He of Mathematics and Prof. Zhang of Oklahoma State, titled "PIFE-PIC: Parallel Immersed-Finite-Element Particle-in-Cell for 3-D Kinetic Simulations of Plasma-Material Interactions" got accepted by SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC)! |
| January 11-15, 2021 | Our group attended the virtual AIAA SciTech Forum 2021. David and Jianxun did a great job presenting our papers on the numerical modeling and simulation fronts! |
| November 23, 2020 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Du of IUPUI and titled "Physics-Based Gaussian Process Method for Predicting Average Product Lifetime in Design Stage" got accepted by the Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering! [link] |
| November 2, 2020 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Du of IUPUI and titled "Adaptive Kriging Method for Uncertainty Quantification of the Photoelectron Sheath and Dust Levitation on the Lunar Surface" got accepted by the ASME Journal of Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification! [link] |
| October 12, 2020 | Xinpeng successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled "Time- and Space-Dependent Uncertainty Analysis and its Application in Lunar Plasma Environment Modeling". Congratulations to Dr. Wei! |
| September 30, 2020 | We are going to start an exciting project upgrading the large vacuum facility with thermal-cycling and more plasma/diagnostic systems through an AFOSR DURIP grant! [link] |
| September 24, 2020 | Group members are awarded the Missouri Space Grant Consortium scholarships/fellowships. Congratulations and Good Job! |
| September 9, 2020 | Blake successfully defended his M.S. thesis titled "Characterization of a Plasma Source Simulating Solar Wind Plasma in a Vacuum Chamber". Congratulations to Blake! |
| August 13, 2020 | Our paper co-authored with Prof. Du of IUPUI and titled "Approximation to Multivariate Normal Integral and Its Application in Time-Dependent Reliability Analysis" got accepted by the journal Structural Safety! [link] |
| May 12, 2020 | Our Experiment Team led by Terry and Blake successfully demonstrated an interesting concept of using solar wind plasma as direct ISRU electricity power source - through lighting up an LED inside the plasma chamber! |
| May 7, 2020 | Kyle McMillen won the Second Prize at the 2020 Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research organized by Missouri S&T's Physics department. Congratulations to Kyle! [link] |
| February 11-13, 2020 | Terry and Blake presented our experimental work at The Impact of Lunar Dust on Human Exploration Workshop held at Houston, Texas. |
| January 6-10, 2020 | Our group attended the AIAA SciTech Forum 2020. David, Terry and Blake, and Jianxun did a great job presenting our papers on both numerical and experimental fronts! |
| October 28-30, 2019 | Dr. Han attended the Annual Meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group held at Washington, D.C. with the support from the LEAG Bernard Ray Hawke Next Lunar Generation Career Development Award, sponsored by NASA SSERVI. [link] |
| October 23, 2019 | First successful firing of our RF plasma source in the vacuum chamber! Congratulations to our Experiment Team! |
| October 20, 2019 | David Lund presented our work "Fully Kinetic PIFE-PIC Simulations of Plasma Charging at Lunar Craters" at The 5th Annual Meeting of SIAM Central States Section held at Iowa State University, October 19-20, 2019, Ames, IA. |
| September, 2019 | Group members are awarded the Missouri Space Grant Consortium scholarships/fellowships. Congratulations and Good Job! |
| August, 2019 | Two papers based on Dr. Han's dissertation study, "Numerical Simulations of Dust Dynamics Around Small Asteroids" [link] and "3-D Fully Kinetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Small Asteroid Charging in the Solar Wind" [link], were published by IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. |
| August, 2019 | David Lund and Robert Foley will join our group. Welcome! |
| April 26, 2019 | David Lund presented our work "Design and Development of Plasma Sources for Laboratory Investigations of Plasma-Material Interactions" at The 28th Annual Spring Meeting of the NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium held at Missouri S&T, April 26-27, 2019, Rolla, MO. |
| March 20, 2019 | Zhangli Hu passed the Ph.D. defense. Congratulations to Dr. Hu! |
| January, 2019 | Zhangli Hu, Xinpeng Wei, and Joshua Burch joined our group. Welcome! |
| October 5-7, 2018 | Dr. Han presented the benchmarking studies on the parallel efficiency of the PIFE-PIC code at the 4th Annual Meeting of SIAM Central States Section held at Norman, OK. |
| August, 2018 | Terence McGarvey joined our group. Welcome! |
| June 24-28, 2018 | Dr. Han presented two studies at the 45th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS 2018) held at Denver, CO. One talk focused on "Current Coupling via Electron Emission in Fast and Mesothermal Ion Beams". The other talk focused on the development progress of the PIFE-PIC code. |
| June 17, 2018 | Our paper, "Immersed Finite Element Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Charging at the Lunar Terminator", was published online at AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. [link] |
| April 9-11, 2018 | Dr. Han presented a poster on the PIFE-PIC code at NASA Fundamental Physics Workshop 2018 held at La Jolla, CA. |
| January 8-12, 2018 | Dr. Han presented the first paper about PIFE-PIC code (paper number AIAA-2018-2196 [link]) at AIAA SciTech Forum and Exposition 2018 held at Kissimmee, FL. |
| January 2018 | Jianxun Zhao and Blake Folta joined our group. Welcome! |
| October 16, 2017 | Dr. Han gave a talk about the IFE-PIC method at Missouri Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematical Sciences (MICAMS) in Rolla, MO. |
| October 8-12, 2017 | Dr. Han presented a paper on ion beam neutralization (paper number IEPC-2017-473) at the 35th International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC) held at Atlanta, GA. |
| August 14, 2017 | Dr. Han started at Missouri S&T as a faculty member. |
Upcoming Events
| April 2022 | SCTC 2022! |
| May 2022 | ICOPS 2022! |