Xiu Jia, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh University, has won second place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE) 2018 NSF Student Poster Competition. She also received a travel grant to attend the competition, which took place in November in Pittsburgh.
Jia is member of the research group led by Dr. Natasha Vermaak, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics. The poster presents Jia’s work on the design and optimization of multi-material composites for wear performance. Her work is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #1538125, which is a collaboration between Dr. Brandon Krick (Co-Principal Investigator) and Vermaak (Principal Investigator).
“Based on an efficient wear model, we’ve applied an optimization method to find the optimal spatial distribution of materials in composites with enhanced wear resistance and heat dissipation properties,” says Jia. “Applications include the design of low-wear and multi-functional systems, such as tires, seals, motors, and brake pads, and even biological systems, such as dentition.”
The 2018 ASME IMECE Track 15 NSF Student Poster Competition is a student-centered IMECE-wide poster session for research funded by the National Science Foundation.
Jia says her research goal is to develop new tools to integrate computational methods into material design and manufacturing processes. “By understanding how material layout gives rise to composite properties,” Jia says, “I hope to create design guidelines for selecting and manufacturing materials systems for specific mechanical applications.”
