The School of Electrical Engineering and its staff have expertise and facilities to provide consultancy services for a wide range of applications.

EXPERTISE & CAPABILITIES

• Optical fibre sensors development and testing
• Characterization of optical materials and rare earth optical spectroscopy
• Data acquisition and control systems and LabVIEW programming
• Advance optical imaging
• Fibre Bragg gratings fabrication
• Short courses and workshops in specialised areas for dedicated interest groups
• In-house manufacturing of high precision opto-mechanical components

FACILITIES

• Fibre Bragg grating fabrication facility featuring a 100 mW frequency -doubled argon ion laser.
• CW Ti:Sapphire laser tunable in the range 675-1100 nm pumped by a 7 W argon ion laser.
• Optical parametric oscillator with tuning range from 410 nm to 2 mm with up to 100 Hz repetition rate.
• A range of lower and high powered diode, gas and solid state lasers covering a full spectrum from the UV to the Infrared.
• A range of detection equipment including CW and pulsed Si, Ge, InGaAs and thermal detectors and power meters, lock-in amplifiers and optical spectrum analysers.
• Optical fibre splicing and handling equipment.

PROJECTS

PROJECT NAME:

INTEGRATED ENERGY MODULE HOUSE MONITORING

Investigators:

Dr. Thinh Nguyen

Client:

MACH Systems Pty Ltd

MACH Systems, a local company, has proposed to construct a prototype building to conduct a proof of concept trial for their "Integrated Energy and Solar Earth Module". This system is a series of active building components that aim to capture and recycle radiant and thermal energy to reduce the building's HVAC energy requirements. The School of Electrical Engineering was engaged to develop a monitoring system and to measure the performance of the energy modules in order to improve and further develop the modules.

A network of 60 temperature and humidity sensors and a mini weather station was developed to monitor the performance of the individual energy modules as well as the integrated performance of the house. The sensor network was built based on 1-wire^Tm technology making it simple to multiplex all the sensors on a single cable. The data acquisition software was developed on the LabVIEW^Tm platform.

The same technology can be applied for quasi-distributed temperature monitoring in such applications as infrastructure, mines, tunnels, water ways etc...