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Pasadena Calif. – Caltech Material science undergraduate student Moriah Bischann, mentored by aerospace postdoctoral scholar, Dr. Owen Kingstedt, is the winner of the Doris S. Perpall Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) Speaking Competition. She was recognized as the best speakers-out of the 200 students who presented their SURF research. Read the full story . . ....
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Dr. Kingstedt presents his work on the thermal signatures of deformation mechanisms and the localization evolution prior to failure in Mg Alloy AZ31B at the Society of Experimental Mechanics International Congress in Orlando, FL, June 2016. The Society for Experimental Mechanics is composed of international members from academia, government, and industry who are committed to interdisciplinary application, research and development, education, and active promotion of experimental methods to: (a) increase the knowledge of physical phenomena; (b) further the understanding of the behavior of materials, structures and systems; and (c) provide the necessary physical basis and verification for analytical and...
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Because of the low symmetry hexagonal close packed atomic structure of Mg there are a limited number of deformation mechanisms to accommodate deformation along the crystallographic c-axis. Only one dislocation slip based mechanism can accommodate deformation along the c-axis. Therefore, deformation twinning plays a dominant role in the accommodation of deformation along the c-axis. To date there have been a number of studies to examine twinning but there are still a number of critical details that need to be addressed to properly inform modeling efforts. Shown below are the first in-situ images of twin propagation of single crystal magnesium,...
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High speed imaging is combined with high strain rate loading to probe the evolution of strain localization leading up to failure in Mg alloys. From this study pathways for deformation are identified which lead to undesired shear band formation and crack formation. Show below is a comparison of the strain localization that occurs at a machined defect for three different loading orientations. The left two strain maps demonstrate the ability of two loading orientations to accommodate deformation in regions away from the specimen through hole. The strain map on the right shows strong localization near the machined defect which...
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Like the proverbial Phoenix rising from the ashes, the University of Utah’s RoboUtes student robotic team emerged from a crippling lab fire last year to place third in the 2016 RASC-AL Robo-Ops robotic competition in Houston, Texas. “Not having a central home for the team made it very difficult to have the team meet and be cohesive,” said the team’s advisor, U mechanical engineering associate professor Mark Minor. “But the core of the team really made this happen. I’m really proud of what they did.” This year’s five-person team, made up of students from the U’s mechanical engineering and...
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The University of Utah’s mining robot team struck gold in them Martian hills, winning the Innovation Award as well as third place overall in the 2016 NASA Robotic Mining Competition in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is only the second time the team has competed in the annual contest. The Utah Mining Robotic Mining Project — comprised of 14 members from the U’s departments of mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, geology, mining engineering and computer engineering — competed May 18 to 20 with a robot that simulates scooping up Martian ice. In all, 45 schools from across the country...
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Dr. Andrew Petruska has accepted an offer to join the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Congratulations Andrew! He and his wife are very excited to start their new life in Colorado. Andrew earned a B.S. in Physics, a B.S./M.S. in Mechanical Engineering (ME) from Carnegie Mellon University, and his Ph.D. in ME (Robotics track) in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Jake Abbott. Before starting his Ph.D. work, he spent four years in the defense industry working on ordnance and control systems for solid rocket motors. At the University of Utah he...
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Robotics graduate student Chris Pratt and Prof. Kam Leang’s ICRA paper and video make the final cut of ICRA 2016 Video Trailer Episode I — Flying Robots! Paper is entitled, “Dynamic Underactuated Flying-Walking (DUCK) Robot” Details can be found here: http://trailer.icra2016.org/...
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Stephen C. Jacobsen, engineer, roboticist and biomedical pioneer passed away at 75. Jacobsen, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, was at the forefront of robotic and biomedical device design. He was the biomechanical engineer behind a number of firsts in medicine: the first artificial heart implanted in a human, the first artificial wearable kidney, and the Utah Arm, which allowed amputees to precisely control an artificial arm with tiny twitches of a chest or shoulder muscle. Read more…...
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