Metal Oxide Varistors Electrical Test Design and Implementation
Start: Summer 2022 | Expected Effort: 5-10 Hrs/Wk
Location: GT Campus 50% | NEETRAC (Off-Campus) 50%
Background
Metal Oxide Varistors (MOVs) play a critical role in DC breakers as they build up the voltage to reduce the fault current under abnormal operating conditions. This highly interdisciplinary study involves electrical engineering basics and knowledge about power electronics, thermal/mechanical design, chemistry, material, ceramics, quantum physics, semiconductors, etc. The research objective may not even be a metal oxide, or even not a varistor, considering this is quite an unprecedented project. However, we will start working on basic materials, design, simulation, and implementation tests to verify/challenge the failure modes of MOVs in DC Circuit Breaker applications.
Compensation: Hourly Pay
Responsibilities
- Mechanical design of test setup
- Electrical Design of the test setup and estimation of parameters
- Procurement progress
- Test implementation (teamwork)
- Data analysis and illustration
Requirements
- Experienced in mechanical CAD design: including but not limited to AutoCAD and SolidWorks
- Experienced in electrical circuit design and simulation: including but not limited to Simulink
- Interests in participating procurement process
- Experienced in multi-physics simulation
- Interests in design, optimization, and participation in testing procedures
What to expect
- A wonderful interdisciplinary team from ECE and MSE with graduate students, postdoc fellows, research engineers, and faculty
- Unlimited ideas and approaches to conducting an interdisciplinary study
- Unprecedented application scenario of metal oxide varistors (or novel varistors)
- Co-authorship for both conference and journal publications
- Trip opportunity to Florida to conduct collaboration (optional)




