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Common materials include natural and synthetic fibers, metals, and plastics in a solid or liquid state. The MCL serves a variety of clients, from pharmaceutical and food manufacturers to textile and polymer companies. The lab performs a variety of tests on many types of materials to understand how the material responds to specified conditions. The Materials Characterization Lab (MCL) offers university researchers and industry partners access to a range of physical testing, thermal analysis, and materials characterization instrumentation and services.
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EPIC CENTER CHARLOTTE SOFTWARE
Control hardware and software devices are used for testing high-speed communications and real‐time system studies.
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Power amplifiers are used to perform power hardware-in-the-loop testing. Several hardware components for grid-level studies-generator exciters, protective relays, power converters, and smart meters-can be tested under real-time grid conditions.
EPIC CENTER CHARLOTTE PROFESSIONAL
The lab features equipment to perform full-scale, real-time testing of components and systems using a combination of numerical simulation and experimental testing.ĭuke Energy Smart Grid features a real-time digital simulation test‐bed that can perform smart grid device functional testing, system integration, real‐time power system analysis, and under-graduate and post‐graduate education and professional training in grid modernization. Faculty and students design and test resilient infrastructure systems to support the power industry. The high-bay lab provides critical infrastructure support for a variety of industries, such as energy, construction, transportation, and materials and manufacturing, and can be used by industrial partners as a third-party test environment. The facility features several specialized research spaces: The facility includes wet and dry research labs for analytical chemistry, trace analysis, DNA, computation, signal processing/communications, microelectronics research and fabrication, laser, and ion processing, as well as fabrication labs, manufacturing and testing labs, Class 1,000 and Class 10,000 cleanroom suites, and a variety of lecture, classroom, and teaching labs for use by the entire engineering and computer science community. Activities are focused on the development of energy and power production, from microchip fabrication and development of new structural materials to solar and wind power. The Energy Production Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, brings together the traditional disciplines of civil, environmental, computer, and electrical engineering in a collaborative, innovative research and teaching community.
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