Overview of PACLab facilities:
The physical acoustics research facilities at Boston University currently
occupy about 2,300 square feet of laboratory and office space within the main
building of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, 110
Cummington Street, Boston.
- PACLab-A is a fully-equipped wet lab (sink, fume
hood, refrigeration, electronic/mechanical fabrication) which currently houses
5 ongoing experiments each utilizing independent, computer-based data
acquisition systems wedded to electronic instrumentation packages generally
designed for the generation, amplification, and detection of ultrasonic waves.
Also employed are systems for spatially and temporally resolved thermal
dosimetry and PIV flow visualization (acoustic hemostasis experiments), laser
Mie-scattering systems for monitoring radial bubble motion (sonoluminescence
experiments) and a high-power annular acoustic array/instrumentation package
(acoustic time-reversal experiments).
- PACLab-B is used primarily for experiments involving extracorporeal shock-wave
lithotripsy. It houses a fully instrumented water tank facility coupled to
instrumentation for the generation and detection of intense shock waves. (By
detection, we refer to both acoustical detection using a compliment of
hydrophones as well as optical sensing of cavitation bubble activity.) The
labs also have a full complement of data acquisition, signal
generation and, signal detection/processing equipment and desktop computers.
Computational facilities available to the group:
- Scientific
Computing at Boston University: In addition to the research
laboratory facilities above, Boston University boasts
generous computational resources. These include a cluster of
departmental workstations (networked for student and light research use)
and state-of-the-art, parallel supercomputers including
an SGI Power Challenge Array, and the first
192-processor SGI Origin 2000 supercomputer to be housed at an American
university.
Back to Main Page
Last Updated February 24, 1998