Bassam Bamieh

Bassam Bamieh's research interests are in the fundamentals of control and dynamical systems, as well as the applications of systems and feedback techniques in several physical and engineering systems. These areas include robust and optimal control, distributed control and dynamical systems, and shear flow transition and turbulence. Bamieh is a one of a group of researchers at the Center for Energy Efficiency Design that has been investigating power generation devices which are much more efficient and reliable than traditional piston or turbine based systems. Bamieh works on thermoacoustic energy conversion devices, a relatively new class of devices for refrigeration and electric power generation that have very high operating efficiencies. In these devices, sound waves are generated by temperature gradients and this acoustic instability can be a useful energy conversion mechanism to create heat pumps (e.g. refrigerators with no moving parts), or converted to electric power using a variety of schemes including energy harvesting.