Measurements of gas temperature in a piston engine u Wavelength-agile lasers u HCCI engine operation u Optical results u Toward a user-friendly optical thermocouple Engine Research Center Mechanical Engineering Department University of Wisconsin – Madison Outline: Prof. Scott Sanders

Measurements of gas temperature in a piston engine u Wavelength-agile lasers u HCCI engine operation u Optical results u Toward a user-friendly optical thermocouple Engine Research Center Mechanical Engineering Department University of Wisconsin – Madison Outline: Prof. Scott Sanders u Introduction u Experiment u Data u Conclusions u Future work u Acknowledgements Avoid boilerplate:

Measurements of gas temperature in a piston engine Engine Research Center Mechanical Engineering Department University of Wisconsin – Madison Prof. Scott Sanders Outline can be on next slide, also consider icons / progress bars [Caswell JPC 2005], [Hagen prelim 2005]

Use a descriptive title here… u …then 1-3 succinct “take-home messages” / conclusions from the slide here u see the difference in the next two slides… …clean graphics here…

Data, continued u The below shows some data we recorded in our laboratory on 11/17/2003. The engine is operating at an equivalence ratio of The humidity seen at early crank angle degrees is just the ambient humidity, then the water produced near -28 CAD aTDC and near -15 CAD aTDC represents water produced in combustion. These results represent an important step toward understanding low- temperature chemical reactions:

Measured evolution of H 2 O in a piston engine u Simulation under-predicts the H 2 O content in the engine  = 0.16

Don’t use legends…

… label curves directly! u viewer doesn’t have to spend time matching curves to the legend u usually results in less wasted “white space” in plots

… label curves directly! u viewer doesn’t have to spend time matching curves to the legend u usually results in less wasted “white space” in plots

Lots of numbers on plot axes are distracting…

… this is much better!

Avoid small plots or plots with small fonts u note that the right plot above has essentially the default setting in Microcal Origin, maybe OK for a document but unacceptable when projected

Manage the units on your plots u use a consistent convention u beware of [m] x u consider [atm], [bar], [Pa]

Avoid un-framed plots u figures require effort to change so try to get them correct the first time

Beware of dense slides  conditions: uniform n-heptane / air charge,  = 0.35, 600 rpm, optical engine  gas spectra measured every 5  s = rpm u gas temperature history inferred from the spectrogram

Additional pointers u avoid acronyms u beware of multi-axis pitfalls u avoid equations; use “pictures” instead u keep bullets succinct, use symbols, pictures, etc. u strike a balance between cluttered slides and a memory game u never apologize for errors u use high contrast, in Scott’s opinion black-on-white is still king u don’t expect good slides when you copy from a paper u know the audience (sometimes low-quality slides, even sketches are acceptable)