Mechanical engineering trio wins Best Presentation at international symposium
Published: Jan 6, 2021 12:00 PM
By Virginia Speirs
Two mechanical engineering students and a professor of mechanical engineering recently won the Best Presentation Award at the International Tribology Research Symposium.
Titled “An Investigation of the Elastic Cylindrical Line Contact Equations for Plane Strain and Stress Considering Friction,” the presentation by Rob Jackson, the Albert J. Smith Jr. Professor of mechanical engineering, recent mechanical engineering graduate Kefei Xu and doctoral student Nolan Chu beat out 220 other papers presented at the three-day conference held virtually in early November.
In the paper, the trio presented a finite element model-based study of elastic cylindrical contact. The goal of the research was to study the transition between the plane stress and plane strain-based Hertz solutions, as well as when each assumption is most applicable.
“This is very fundamental work and has many applications,” Jackson said. “The work could be used for modeling railroad wheels, gears, electrical connectors, tires and elastic seals used in many applications. There will probably be even other applications that I haven’t thought of.”
The team researched the material for nearly a year.
“It is always an honor to win an award at a conference like this,” Jackson said. “It means we did a good job communicating our work. Kefei Xu and Nolan Chu did a great job on the research.”
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A slide from "An Investigation of the Elastic Cylindrical Line Contact Equations for Plane Strain and Stress Considering Friction."
