Dr. John Patten is a professor with research interests in manufacturing processes, renewable energy and alternative fuel cars, such as plug in hybrid electric vehicles. He is chair of the Manufacturing Engineering Department at Western Michigan University and is the founding director of the Manufacturing Research Center within the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His extensive manufacturing research beginning in the early 1980s at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte made Patten an ideal candidate to lead the MRC, when he was hired by WMU in 2003.

The MRC is a multidisciplinary operation that provides applied research in engineering and the sciences to serve manufacturing industries. The center efforts help to reduce the cost of the processes and improve productivity, thereby reducing the cost of products and technology for businesses. The state-of-the-art laboratories allow for research in machining, materials testing and green manufacturing.

WMU created the MRC in Battle Creek to serve as a resource to the manufacturing sector in Western Michigan. Patten said the MRC attracts international students from Spain, Turkey, Iran, India, Malaysia and many other countries, to study and conduct research, something he is very proud of.

"We take a technical and scientific approach to manufacturing," Patten said. "These processes have been around for hundreds of years. We use traditional and nontraditional methods. The machining component of the MRC is to take a block of material, like metal, and shape it into something useful, like an engine component. Engineers who have the ability to take a product or concept and design the manufacturing process are in high demand."

The center’s research involves a variety of projects to discover new processes for computer-integrated manufacturing, quality assurance and precision engineering. "Many modern engineering materials have to be put under very high pressures or temperatures to manipulate them," Patten said. "The materials tend to be expensive, as do the processes used to convert them into useful products."

Patten said work with advanced materials, such as semiconductors and ceramics, must be precise, and can present additional challenges when transforming such materials to a final form. Unlike traditional methods of using heat to manipulate material on the macroscopic scale, precision engineers use tools to work on a small scale, referred to as micro or nano manufacturing. Although heat may work to soften the material, he said items such as electronics or semiconductors need a more precise final form, as heat, or more precisely temperature, can cause a part to deform and change shape. One process, nanoindentation, observes the cracking threshold of brittle materials, and this information is used to improve the machining procedure.

"We typically work on the final shaping process used to finish up the product," Patten said. "Products we are working towards tend to be higher-cost components. These are new products that can’t be manufactured any other way, or existing products processes that are developed to reduce the cost of the final part."

Manufacturing Alternative Energy Solutions

The 450-foot turbine can be seen from US-131 with its three, six-foot blades. The generator produces two kilowatts of power, enough to handle the electrical needs of a typical home minus air conditioning. The wind turbine needs only eight mph of wind to start spinning. Plans for upgrades to the generator over the coming years will increase the output to five kilowatts. Patten has been fund-raising for two larger turbines: a 10 to 15 kilowatt and a 100 to 250 kilowatt output turbine.

"Every time I go past the wind turbine it puts a smile on my face," Patten said. "Other projects that won’t materialize for 5 to 20 years down the road, maybe do not have such an immediate impact. These longer range or long-term projects are job security."

For one such future project, he is researching production processes for plug in hybrid electric vehicles powered by wind energy. In 1992, he helped formed the Carolina’s Consortium for Alternatively Fueled Electric Vehicles. Michigan’s research universities, which include WMU, are establishing a Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing of Alternative & Renewable Energy Technologies to address the needs of alternative and renewable energy technology industries within the state.

Patten’s research focuses on how emissions from automobiles and electrical power plants can be reduced using wind-powered generation to fuel or charge plug in hybrid electric vehicles. He has worked extensively with plug-in vehicles and drove an electric car for eight years. He believes in the future it will be possible to charge a plug-in electric car from wind-powered plants. The future may be sooner rather than later as Patten recently received funding to implement a wind energy charged plug in hybrid electric vehicles.

"There is much focus on tailpipe emissions, but you have to think about the emissions from the power plant," Patten said. "The electric car plugs into a wall outlet and its power comes from a power plant somewhere."

He believes plug in hybrid electric vehicles can be one answer to decrease the limitations that electric plug-in cars present. Hybrid cars run on both electric and gasoline. When the car idles at a light or stop sign, the gasoline-powered engine charges the battery. A plug in hybrid electric vehicles allows the vehicle to switch between gas-power and electric, much like a typical hybrid. His research proposes a car that switches from electric power in the city and only uses the hybrid-mode during long-distance driving to reduce emissions in pollution-heavy cities. He said a major problem with electric cars is the limited distances one can travel between charges.

"The merit of the plug-in feature—you can probably go to school, work and then back, he said. "When you go to Chicago (120 miles from Kalamazoo) you can switch (automatically) to gas-electric hybrid-mode."

He said the costs are reasonable now (about $10,000) and the technology exists to make such a car a reality. With gas prices on the rise, Patten anticipates interest may increase for finding local alternative and renewable energy solutions, such as plug in hybrid electric vehicles and wind energy.

"The production of wind turbines has a couple of advantages in terms of producing energy—there are no emissions, and they create job opportunities," he said. "Since Michigan is also the auto capital of the world, the goal is to develop plug in hybrid electric vehicles in collaboration with the auto companies that make these vehicles and to eventually work with manufacturers and utilities to charge the vehicles with renewable energy sources, such as wind."

Visit Dr. Patten's Web site: homepages.wmich.edu/~jpatten

By Katherine Peach, Haenicke Institute journalism intern