WELCOME TO DANIEL'S HOME PAGE

Last updated, 03 May 2011

 

Brief description of myself

I currently am working at the University of Illinois in the Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) where I am doing research into Lithium as a Fusion Reactor PFC material as well as doing surface sputtering research. I previously did a feasability study of a new microwave heating system as part of the H-1 Heliac upgrades at the Australian National University. I also have done a Post-Doc at the Max-Planck-Institute für Plasmaphysik, Greifswlad, Germany. I was born and grew up in Sydney, Australia, till the age of fifteen and attended Christian Brothers Lewisham. I then moved to Brisbane where I finished my schooling at Iona College, Lindum, in 1995.

 

 In 1996 I started an undergraduate degree in science at the University of Queensland and decided to pursue a career in physics. In 1998 I graduated with a Bachelor of Science, major in physics. In 1999 I did my honours year at UQ in laser diagnostics for hypersonic fluid flows under the supervision of Dr. Tim McIntyre. During my undergraduate degree I developed a great interest in plasma and fusion physics which led me in 2000 to the University of Sydney to start my Masters degree on a helium diagnostic beam for plasma temperature, density and E- fields for the H-1NF under the supervision of A/Prof. Brian James. In 2001, I upgraded to a PhD in the same field and I qualified for my PhD on 18^th April 2006. Also, on the side, due to my keen interest in tennis, I have done some work with A/Prof. Rod Cross on the physics of tennis.

 

For the last half of 2005 and first half of 2006 I was a researcher developing diagnostics and doing basic plasma research on the PCA machine Sydney University. In September 2006 I started work at the MPIPP on the VINETA device but in 2007 switched over to the WEGA stellarator where helped in the development of a 28 GHz ECRH system and other diagnostic systems. I then worked at the Australian National University in Canberra doing a feasability study for a new heating system for H-1 and now have a position at the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological engineering at the University of Illinois. I am working with Prof. David Ruzic in the Center of Plasma-Materials and Interaction working in the Liquid-Lithium fusion program and also plasma sputtering experiments.

 

Outside of physics I play a range of sports the most notable being tennis, where I have played state and national tournaments, and have coached tennis as well. This has led to my interest in the physics of tennis and my involvement in that area of research. I also play Ultimate Frisbee, which is a cross between touch football and netball but with a frisbee disk. I have played many tournaments including the national titles. Other interests are strongly influenced by my Polish heritage. I am fluent in Polish and have previously been involved in the Polish community in Brisbane, where I worked with the Polish club and the folkloric dance group (Obertas), and also in Sydney where I have been a member of the scouts and the Polish folkloric dance group (Syrenka). My other interests include politics and history, and I follow the sport of rugby league with a passion. This has also allowed me to get involved with European rugby league in helping to promote the sport and meet some great people. I also have written a number of articles for Rugby league publications.

 

My work in Rugby League has led me to establish a small business, Rugby League International Scores, where aside from keeping track of all the worlds results in the one spot I plan to do some web advertising, promoting and consultancy for rugby league. If you have an interest in any of this please contact me.

 

This is a brief introduction about myself, feel free to contact me with any questions you have about my work, hobbies, interests or other topics.

|  Current research  |  Past research  |  Work experience  |  Publications  |

 

Current research topics

Plasma Physics

The definition of a plasma is: “A plasma is quasi-neutral gas of charged and neutral particles which exhibit collective behaviour.” (F. F. Chen). This means that you have positive and negative charged particles that influence each others behaviour while the plasma as a bulk is neutral enough, i.e. n⁺ = n^- = n_total.

 

I currently am working at the Center for Plasma Materials and Interactions at the Univesity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the USA. This is withing the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering. There are several projects I am involed with. I am looking at various plasma sputtering methods which are done in conjunction with the Kurt. J. Lesker Company as well as Sematech. I am also involved in the fusion side of things where I am looking at Liquid Lithium as a potential Plasma Facing Component (PFC) material in the divertor region of a fusion reactor. The power incident on some of the surfaces can be as high as 60 MW/m² and liquid lithium offers a good way to not only be able to withstand the heat and not be damamged but to take that heat away. Other experiments are looking at how lithium can be applied to surfaces and what effect does it have on the erosion of surfaces as well as the plasma parameters. Also measurement of the Seebeck co-efficient for lithium as well as studies of how ELM's intercat with ICRF antennas in a fusion reactor. The Fusion research is aprt of the overall Fusion program at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratories and specifically the NSTX machine.

 

Rugby League International Scores

Recently I have set up my own business based around my other passion which is Rugby League. The business is called Rugby League International Scores and is based on keeping track of all domestic and International scores from around the world in the one spot. It also does Rugby League advertising, promotions and consultancy where I look to help nations, clubs and players with various issues they may have in the sport, be it from finding a club to helping set up a tour. If you enjoy rugby league or want to learn more then have a look at my website here.

Other Reserch Topics

Recently I worked in the Plasma Reserch Laboratories at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. With a recent Government large grant to upgrade the H-1 Heliac reactor, one of the areas marked for upgarde is the heating system using RF antennas and Gyrotrons.

I conducted a feasbility study to find which heating systems will be most suitable to not only compliment but explore new heating and plasma regimes at a power level of up to P = 40 kW at a magnetic field of B = 0.5 T  and frequency of wither f = 14 GHz or 28 GHz.

 

In 2009 I completed a Post-Doc on the WEGA (Wendelstein Experiment in Greifswald für die Ausbildung) stellarator. WEGA is a classical stellarator and has been operating at IPP Greifswald since 2001 and its main goal is to do basic plasma physics research, education and training of scientists and engineers and to test new diagnostics for the Wendelstein W-7X stellarator that's being built. My work involves developing a 28 GHz microwave ECRH (Electron Cyclotron Resonant Heating) system using a gyrotron (10 kW continuous, 40 kW pulsed) to compliment the already existing 2.45 GHz microwave ECRH system. The standard X2 mode will allow greater plasma densities and temperatures to be achieved and higher magnetic fields to be used (B < 0.5 T). Further it is planned that for over-dense plasmas where the microwaves are reflected an OXB (Ordinary - eXtaordinary - Bernstein) system can be used to heat the plasma. In conjunction with the heating system diagnostics involving thick Langmuir Probe and a helium beam are being used and built respectively. More recently a diamagnetic loop has been implemented with an online integrator to do measurements of the plasma energy and be integrated into the W7-X control group. I am still involved in developing an off-line computer analysis to do these measurements as well.

 

Previous work was developing plasma diagnostics on the pulsed cathodic arc (PCA) at the University of Sydney. The PCA is a high power plasma deposition system used to develop new materials and develop ways to deposit the materials. The construction of the system is very similar to the toroidal systems used in the study of fusion plasmas. Thus, magnetic (B) and electric (E) fields can have a large influence on how the plasma behaves as it’s transported through the system. The diagnostics used were magnetic probes to measure the toroidal, poloidal B-fields and fluctuations, electric probes (Langmuir probe) to measure potentials, electron temperature, T_e, and electron density, n_e, as well as spectroscopy (helium beam, interferometers) to measure electron and ion parameters, T_e, n_e, n_i, T_i and v_i. Measurements have shown that plasma fluctuations occur in the 40 - 50 kHz range and their amplitude is a maximum when the plasma rotation is low. Thus an optimal condition has been observed for an average toroidal magnetic field <B_f> = 15 mT and Duct bias V_duct = 30 V.

My PhD involved developing a pulsed supersonic helium beam for plasma diagnostics. The beam is used to measure, T_e, and n_e. In particular this application is being developed for use in magnetically confined plasmas, such as those used on the large fusion devices. In Australia, the H1-NF heliac at the Plasma research Labs at the Australian National University is a stellarator that produces such plasmas. My project was with the University of Sydney plasma department under the supervision of A/Prof. Brian James and involved a collaboration with Prof. John Howard at the ANU where this beam was finally used and now is a standard, T_e, diagnostic. As well a collaboration with Prof. Ken Takiyama’s group at the University of Hiroshima was established.

The diagnostic involves producing a supersonic beam of metastable helium atoms that are injected radially into the plasma. As the beam interacts with the plasma the helium atoms are excited emit light. The light is collected and its intensity is measured using a pair of linear photo-multiplier tubes (PMT). Two wavelengths are monitored simultaneously. Since the light intensity is dependent on T_e and n_e, an intensity ratio method in conjunction with a collisional radiative model (CRM) is used to determine these parameters. In H-1NF the beam has been mainly used to measure T_e, and has been very successful. Different types of heating modes have been observed and distinguished by the beam. A non-resonant (7 MHz) r.f. heated (NRH) plasma in argon has been studied and shows that the heating of the plasma is confined to one plasma edge, where as in an ion cyclotron resonant heated (ICRH) plasma the heating is also in the edge but is more distributed so that the plasma has a hollow T_e profile. This has also been observed in a hydrogen / deuterium plasma. In an electron cyclotron resonant heated (ECRH) plasma the T_e profile is peaked in the middle of the plasma and decays through time. In the H / D plasma, simultaneous T_e and n_e measurements have been made and show a peaked n_e profile.

A metastable helium beam, in conjunction with laser induced fluorescence (LIF), can be used to measure the strength of E-fields in a plasma. A tuneable, pulsed dye laser is used to excite the metastable (2¹S) helium atoms to an excited level (n¹D) by a forbidden transition. Due to Stark mixing, the fluorescence that is observed has a dependence on the electric field strength for the measured excitation transition probability. The metastables can be produced by several ways: either by a hollow cathode discharge (HCD), a Penning discharge (PD) or the plasma itself if energetic enough. The metastable levels are measured using an atomic absorption technique. Preliminary measurements show a good fluorescence signal for the n = 5 level which corresponds to electric fields of ~ 40 Vcm^-1.
 

 

Previous research

Physics of Tennis.

Tennis is one of the most popular sports played in the word, but it is also one of the least researched and understood in terms of its physics. Players have their own ways of viewing the sport. They will talk about the durability and playability of, say, strings or a tennis court. But what does that exactly mean. Ask one of the "professionals" what they mean and they can't tell you, they themselves don't really know. Usually you get an answer such as it feels good or something.

The physics of tennis research that I undertake at the University of Sydney, under the guidance of Associate Professor Rod Cross is to make sense of what all this means. We do experiments from measuring the properties of tennis strings, such as friction, tension loss etc., to understanding how the properties of a tennis court affect the way a ball plays. Experiments show some stunning results, namely that psychologically players are fooled into thinking one thing when the exact opposite is happening.

 

Honours research.

Phase-Shifting Holographic Interferometry (PSHI) is a non intrusive laser imaging method where two reference arms are used to encode information onto a hologram instead of one as in most interferometric methods. The two reference arms encode two separate holograms that interfere with each other when reconstructed to produce the interferogram.

Everyone is familiar with holograms and their applications, but probably not with how they are made. The difference between a hologram and normal photograph is that a hologram will measure the phase of the incoming light as well as its amplitude. To be able to do this, holography needs two beams of light. An object beams and reference beam. The object beam encodes the information of the target while the reference beam gives a phase reference for the light of the object beam on the hologram. Here, for two reference arm holography the standard theory for holography still applies where the amplitudes for different beams, the object and reference, give a total intensity for the hologram.

The benefits of using two reference arms is that in the reconstruction process the interference of the two holograms is able to be controlled. This allows different interferograms at shifted phases (thus Phase-shifting HI) of the same event to be produced. Since the background noise is the same for all interferograms a simple program based on simultaneous equations can be used to filter out the noise instead of having to use problematic Fourier techniques.

 The technique has been used on the High Enthalpy Shock Tube (HEG) in Göttigen, Germany. At the University of Queensland physics department, the technique was used on the Small Shock Tunnel facility to study Mach 7 fluid flows and shock waves. This technique is planned to be used in the X1 and X2 expansion tunnels.
 

 

Work experience

Research  experience.

• January 1998: Department of Nuclear Physics, ANU. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry measurements of cosmogenic ¹⁰Be, supervisor Dr. Keith Fifield.
• June-July 1998: Plasma Research Laboratories, ANU. Radio frequency plasma experiments - preparation of the experiments for the conclusion of an external contract. This involved the construction of matching networks for VHF antenna coupling and circuit components. Also measurements of antenna current and power, data acquisition with digital oscilloscopes, outdoor VHF communications experiments and two outdoor antenna radiation pattern measurement experiments, supervisor Dr. Gerard Borg.
• November-February 1999: ANU Summer Research Scholarships, ANU. This involved a continuation of the plasma antenna research mentioned above as well as I helped develop plasma sheets, supervisor Dr. Gerard Borg.

For more information on Plasma Antennas, click here.

Teaching experience.

University of Queensland.

• 1998: Worked in the Science In Action program, doing demonstrations to the general public.
• 1998: Was a school liaison for the Physics Department, traveling to schools doing demonstrations and promoting physics.
• 1999: Took over the running of the Science In Action program.
• 1999: Continued with school liaisons.
• 1999: Tutored first year lab.
• 1999: Tutored the first year electromagnetism course for engineers.

University of Sydney.

• 2000 - 2005: Tutored first year lab (advanced) in first semester.
• 2000 - 2005: Tutored second year Computational Physics - Microlab, first and second semester.
• 2000 - 2005: Tutored second year lab, first and second semester.
• 2000: Ran the first year projects in second semester.
• 2000: Gave a second year lecture in the Instrumentation course titled "Designing an Experiment".

 

Four most recent refereed scientific publications

D. N. Ruzic, W. Xu, D. Andruczyk and M. A Jaworski, Lithium-Metal Infused Trenches (LiMIT) for Heat Removal in Fusion Devices, Nuc. Fusion 52 (2011) 102002 (4pp)

V. Surla, M. Tung, W. Xu, D. Andruczyk, M. Neumann, D. N. Ruzic and D. Mansfield, Seebeck Coefficient Measurements of Lithium Isotopes, J. Nuc. Matter 415 (2011) 18-22.

S. Jung, V, Surla, T, K. Gray, D. Andruczyk and D. N. Ruzic, Characterisation of a Theta-Pinch Plasma Using Tripple Probe Diagnostics, J. Nuc. Matter, Published on line, xxx (2011) xxx-xxx.

S. M. Collis, R. Dall, J. Howard, D. Andruczyk and B. W. James, Validation of collisional radiative modeling of emission line ratios for diagnostic helium beam injection into plasma, J. Quant. Spectro. and Rad. Transf. 110 (2009) 340-346.

Four most recent conference presentations

D. Andruczyk, P. Raman, V. Surla, P. Fiflis, A Groll and D. N. Ruzic, Study of Lithium on Plasma Facing Components in IIAX, Annual Plasma Facing Components Meeting, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge TN, USA, 10-12 August 2011.

D. Andruczyk, P. Fiflis, V. Surla, D. N. Ruzic and D. Mansfield, An Electrostatic Lithium Injector for NSTX, 24th Symposium on Fusion Engineerng, Chicago IL, USA, 27-30 June 2011.

P. Raman, A. Groll, D. Andruczyk, V Surla and D. N. Ruzic, Wetting of Lithium on Boronized Plasma Facing Component Materials, 24th Symposium on Fusion Engineering, Chicago IL, USA, 27-20 June 2011.

S. Jung, D. Andruczyk and D. N. Ruzic, Laboratory Investigations of Vapour Shielding for Lithium Coated Molybdenum in DeVEX, 24th Symposium On Fusion Engineering, Chicago IL, USA, 27-30 June 2011.

Four most recent rugby league and other magazine publications

 

Daniel Andruczyk Feature Article "Ireland vs USA Match Report", Rugby League Review, April Issue 2011 Page 34

Daniel Andruczyk Article "Split Continues in American Rugby League", Rugby League Review, April Issue 2011 Page 26

Daniel Andruczyk Article "Science and Reserch Gets a Boost but CSIRO Gets Cuts", Puls Polonii, 20 May 2010, Link

 

Daniel Andruczyk Article "Community Sport Gets a Boost", Puls Polonii, 20 May 2010, Link

 

For a full list of refereed papers, conferences and other publications please click here.