Faculty Profile

Cesar Luongo, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Chair and Chair of the Graduate Committee, received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering (Electrical Engineering minor) from Stanford University in 1986. He received an M.S. degree (Mechanical Engineering) in 1981 as an Organization of American States Fellow, also from Stanford University. He received the degree of Engineer (Ing.) from the University of Uruguay in 1979. His professional career prior to joining the College of Engineering was spent entirely in private industry. Since 1986 he worked with the R&D division of Bechtel in San Francisco, California, working primarily on analysis and design of superconducting magnets for a variety of applications, most notably as energy storage (SMES). While at Bechtel he also had the opportunity to participate on a number of other projects and technologies, including thermal aspects of battery energy storage plants, power quality issues in electrical networks, and fusion magnets. Dr. Luongo brings his private sector experience to the classroom by teaching the senior-year capstone design project, exposing students to team-based design processes as practiced in an industrial setting. Most of the projects in this capstone course are sponsored by industrial partners. His research activities are in the broad area of applied superconductivity. Over the span of 20+ years (both in industry and academia) his research has covered a wide spectrum of problems: from fundamental aspects of stability and quench in superconductors, to the analysis, design and test of superconducting magnets, components; and more recently, ultra-compact superconducting electric motors for propulsion. Some of his research activities have ventured into the modeling and simulation of advanced energy systems, particularly those involving fuel cells and energy storage devices. Dr. Luongo belongs to the Board of Directors for the Applied Superconductivity Conference (elected for the 2002-2008 term) and has been in the program committee or technical editor for its proceedings (IEEE Transactions of Applied Superconductivity) on numerous occasions. He served as ASC Program Chair in 2004. Dr. Luongo is also on the steering committee of the CHATS on Applied Superconductivity workshop series. Between Summer 2008 and Summer 2010, Professor Luongo is on extended assignment working for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in CEA, Cadarache, France, applying his expertise as part of an international team developing the first large-scale fusion reactor.

• P. J. Masson, G. V. Brown, D. Soban, and C. A. Luongo, "HTS machines as enabling technology for all-electric airborne vehicles," Superconductor Science and Technology, Vol. 20, pp. 748-756, 2007.
• B. Lu and C. A. Luongo, "Measurement of interestrand conductance in multi-strand superconducting cables," Journal of Applied Physics, 100(9), 093906 (10 pages), 2006.
• S. Mao, C. Luongo, and D. Kopriva, "Numerical simulation of the HeII/HeI phase transition in superconducting magnets," International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 49, pp. 4786-4794, 2006.
• C. A. Luongo and F.J. Unterlass, "Shunt connected superconducting energy management system having a single switchable connection to the grid," U.S. Patent 6,215,202 B1, 2001.
• L. Bottura and C. A. Luongo, "Stability in Forced Flow Superconductors," Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (J. Webster, Editor), John Wiley & Sons (New York), vol. 21, pp.87-98, 1999.
• C.A. Luongo, "Superconducting storage systems: An overview," IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 2214-2223, 1996 (Invited Plenary Session paper presented at the 14th Magnet Technology Conference, Tampere, Finland, June 11-16, 1995).
• C.A. Luongo, R.J. Loyd, F.K. Chen, and S.D. Peck, "Thermal-Hydraulic Simulation of Helium Expulsion from a Cable-in-Conduit Conductor," IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 25, no.2, pp. 1589-1595, 1989.
• C.A. Luongo, R.J. Loyd, and C.L. Chang, "Current Diffusion Effects on the Performance of Large Monolithic Conductors," IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 25, no.2, pp. 1576-1581, 1989.