Industry Updates
- PDF / 66,716 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 55 Downloads / 205 Views
Industry Updates
ASM International 2017
Army Researchers Point to Early Warning Signs in Military Vehicle Structures Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have shown that early fatigue damage behavior in structures may be predicted through the study of the microscale mechanical behavior of the material. Daniel Cole explained, ‘‘Many current structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are limited to detecting very late stage damage;… our group is interested in fundamental material behavior prior to damage in the conventional sense, such as a macroscale fatigue crack.’’ He said that if the behavior of the material prior to damage is better understood, this could lead to vehicle structures that act as sensors themselves, with the ability to report their health state and adapt to varying conditions. The researchers created controlled fatigue damage precursors by exposing slender cantilever beams to vibratory loads and identified subtle variations in the dynamic behavior of the beams—such as shifts in the natural frequency—as the fatigue cycles increased. They then used an analytical model to relate the variation in local mechanical properties to the changing dynamics of the structure, which agreed fairly well with the experimental dynamics tests. ‘‘We are encouraged by these results because they provide a framework for linking the materials science and structural dynamics communities, which typically are not well connected fields,’’ said Cole. The team said they hope that the multidisciplinary approach can attract more researchers in the SHM community to study early fatigue damage and ultimately reduce the high costs for the DoD to sustain high value mechanical and aerospace systems. For more information, the article, ‘‘Local Mechanical Behavior of Steel Exposed to Nonlinear Harmonic
123
Oscillation,’’ is available at https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s11340-017-0252-8.
Magnesium Extracted from Ore in Continuous Process by Carbothermic Technology The University of Colorado at Boulder announces that its researchers have developed a technology to extract magnesium from ore in a continuous process that requires less energy and generates less waste compared to today’s leading methods. A few different methods currently exist for creating magnesium metal, but the most common one takes ore from the ground, combines it with expensive silicon, and uses extremely high heat—around 1200 C (2190 F)—to create chemical reactions and extract the magnesium in small batches. The CU Boulder researchers swapped cheap, abundant carbon for the silicon reactant and addressed flaws in the production process, resulting in a system that requires much less energy. They also managed to extract magnesium continuously, rather than in batches, and eliminated the solid waste commonly formed. The technology could have global economic implications. University researchers have launched a spinoff company called Big Blue Technologies, where they are working to translate the laboratory innovations into a viable commercial-sca
Data Loading...
