ME Graduates Won Bronze Award in HKEIA Innovation and Technology Project Competition

A group of ME graduates won the Bronze Award in the HKEIA (The Hong Kong Electronic Industries Association) Innovation and Technology Project Competition 2018. The award ceremony took place at the HKEIA Annual Dinner on 15 Oct 2018. The Hong Kong Electronic Industries Association has been running the competition annually with an objective to recognize and reward students with outstanding projects which demonstrate excellence in technology and innovation. Final year students studying in engineering fields from universities and tertiary institutions in Hong Kong are invited to participate in the competition with their final year projects. Judging criteria include creativity, applicability and practicability, and application of technology. The panel of judges consists of senior professionals and experts from the industry. PolyU ME final year students, KONG Miu Shan, WONG Yat Yuen and TSE Hung Kwan, teamed up for the final year project named “Design, Assemble and Test the Electric Power Supply System for Formula Student Car”, under the supervision of Dr Henry CHU and Ir Elsa TANG. The project aimed at designing and promoting a newly developed powertrain system to the market. Their sophisticated supply system and formula car project won praise from the panel of judges and obtained the Bronze Award with a cash prize of HK$10,000. Members of this group were graduates of BEng (Hons) in Product Analysis and Engineering Design in 2018. They are also active members of the PolyU Racing Team (Formula SAE), devoted to developing a brand new racing car to join the Formula Student Electric China Competition every year.

HKPolyU Racing HKF-02e Rollout Ceremony on 15 Oct 2018

Pioneered by a group of ME students , HKPolyU Racing Team will join the 2018 Formula Student China competition (FAES China) on 26 Nov 2018 in Zhuhai – a competition that involves design, engineering, manufacturing, testing, and races. HKPolyU Racing is the first ever team representing Hong Kong to take part in the Formula SAE, which is described as the largest collegiate engineering design contest for undergraduate and graduate students from different parts of the world, such as Germany, Australia, UK, Italy, etc. The contest aims to enhance students’ engineering design and project management skills by applying learned theories in a challenging competition. Established in 2015 by a few students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the team is now expanding and collaborating with students from other disciplines including the Faculty of Business and School of Design. While collaboration across disciplines is on the rise and positioned to be a major catalyst for change in higher education, the team is creating a platform for students to share the best practices and knowledge across disciplines. Students have been putting a lot of efforts into the team as to maximize our potential and at the same time encourage young students to pursue their dreams with persistence. This ceremony marks the embarkation of the competition. In this rollout ceremony, around 120 participants including PolyU senior management, Education Bureau, professionals and senior executives from the mechanical engineering field and industrial sponsors will join us. For more details, please click here. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HKPolyURacing/ Website: www.hkpolyuracing.com Photos:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z-46WEisNzzBnIy6g30AHhyOqQGYLoB0?usp=sharing

ME researchers unveiled the secret of the flicking of diffusion flames

Diffusion flames are ubiquitous in domestic and industrial applications that have been shaping human civilization. The development of flame instabilities could impair combustion performance, cause ignition failure or flame extinction, damage combustion devices, and trigger uncontrollable fire hazard. A prominent phenomenon related to the stability of a buoyant diffusion flame is flame flickering, or puffing, which describes the vibratory motion of the luminous flame. Previous experimental investigations have confirmed a famous scaling relation between the flickering frequency and the diameter of the fuel inlet. However, the fundamental mechanism for this relation has not been clearly understood. To unveil the secret of the flickering of buoyant diffusion flames, Dr. Xi Xia, research fellow, and Dr. Peng Zhang, associate professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, proposed a vortex-dynamical theory that connects the periodicity of flame flickering to the periodic formation and detachment of the toroidal vortices, that result from the buoyancy-induced shearing at the flame sheet (as illustrated in the figure). By incorporating the theory on vortex pinch-off, this work successfully establishes a theoretical scaling theory for the flickering frequency, which has been validated by the existing experimental data of pool flames and jet diffusion flames. This work has been included in the latest issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. [X. Xia and P. Zhang, J. Fluid Mech. (2018), vol. 855, pp. 1156-1169]

Staff Retreat 2018

The Department of Mechanical Engineering successfully hosted its annual departmental retreat in Discovery Bay on 16 – 17 August 2018. The retreat kicked off with the Head’s introduction and budget issue. Followed by the presentation of research matters by the Associate Head, this stimulated a vibrant discussion among staff members and the responses and feedback received will offer significant insights for Department’s future development. In addition, a briefing regarding the coming HKIE accreditation exercise enabled colleagues to understand more about the programme characteristics, for examples the quality assurance circle and programme learning outcomes. After the meeting, some colleagues explored nature on foot by going hiking to the Lookout Point. They enjoyed panoramic views overlooking the South China Sea towards Hong Kong and appreciated the tree-filled landscapes. The retreat was concluded by an open forum. Over 30 staff members joined the retreat and found it being constructive for the year to come.

ME year-2 student won the 2nd Place at the 2018 Asia Pacific Mechanics Contest for College Students

Mr. XU Tianlu, a year-2 student studying in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, won the Second Place at the 2018 Asia Pacific Mechanics Contest for College Students organized by the Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Republic of China and held at the National Cheng Kung University during 14-16 August 2018. This year, the competition task was to design a lightweight beam with excellent mechanical performance and produce it using 3D printing. About 39 students from 11 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore participated the final competition. The winners were selected based on criteria including design innovation, design methodology, 3D printing technology, presentation skills, as well as the mechanical performance of the beam exhibited during the test. “This was the first time that our PolyU ME sent a team to this contest. I am so pleased and proud that Tianlu won the Second Place Award. I have confidence that we will perform even better in the next year’s contest,” Dr. Haimin YAO said, who is the team coach and programme leader of ME programme.

PolyU is ranked 29 by ARWU in Mechanical Engineering

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has continued to make major strides in the world ranking. In a recent release at the “ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subject” published on 17 July 2018, PolyU has made a significant rise in the subject of Mechanical Engineering from last year’s 47th to this year’s 29th in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/mechanical-engineering.html. PolyU is the only University in Hong Kong ranked top 50 in the world. The ranking is based on the following indicators: Number of papers authored by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected from Web of Science and InCites. Category Normalized Citation Impact during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected form InCites database. International collaboration during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected from InCites database. Number of papers published in Top Journals in an Academic Subject during the period of 2012-2016. Top Journals are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey or by Journal Impact Factor. Total number of staff of winning a significant award in an Academic Subject since 1981. The results show that Mechanical Engineering in PolyU continues to be regarded as one of the best in the world. PolyU Mechanical Engineering will continue to strive for the excellence in our academic and research missions. About The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and updated on an annual basis. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies.

PolyU ME staff advance energy harvesting technology

A wind-driven hybrid triboelectric-electromagnetic nanogenerator was recently developed and tested by PolyU ME staff led by Dr Xingjian Jing. The work will be reported by Nano Energy, which is a high-impact and well-recognized journal in the area, with an impact factor 13.12 (2017 Journal Citation Report; Rank 7/146 in Applied Physics, 15/285 in Materials Sciences Multidisciplinary, 7/92 in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology). Learn more on ELSEVIER The frequent occurrence of natural disasters is a major threat to the property and casualties of human beings in recent decades. Disaster prone points can be very closely monitored by augmenting the distribution of wireless sensor networks. However, regularly replacing the battery of electronics remains a significant challenge especially in a remote area. To this aim, a wind-driven hybridized energy harvester is invented, which can harvest rotation energy and can be integrated with WSN technology to construct a self-powered natural disaster monitoring system. In this novel harvester, the rotator is directly driven by external rotational motion thus can easily hybridize the TENNG with eighteen EMGs. Consequently, the fully packaged WH-EH device combining with the water-proof flexible solar cell can be completely isolated from the harsh wilderness environment. The output feature of TENG of high voltage but low current that perfectly compensate for the differing performance of EMG to achieve an excellent output power of the hybrid device with a broad frequency range. Moreover, the WH-EH is capable of lighting hundreds of LEDs and powering small electronics. The quick-acting charging ability of a capacitor by the WH-EH was conducted effectively in experimental tests. Three self-powered sensor systems enabled by a single WH-EH are systematically investigated and demonstrated, including a temperature sensor for forest fire detection, vibration sensor for earthquake monitoring and a wireless transceiver for alarm information spreading. Obviously, the invention of the hybridized generator will be of great importance to promote the development of self-powered wireless sensor networks and provide a sustainable power-supply solution to long-term natural disaster monitoring stations in residential or remote areas.

ME student winning Sir James Lighthill Award

At the Twenty-fifth International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV25) held at Hiroshima in Japan, Mr. ZHANG Xiaoqi, a year two Ph.D. student in ME, won the prestigious Sir James Lighthill Award in the best student paper competition. The Award is for the best paper published in the Proceedings of ICSV by a person in the early stages of his/her career. The author of the paper must either be a student or within the first five years of full-time employment. As one of the biggest sound and vibration control events, ICSV was organized by the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV) and was attended this year by over 820 participants from over 30 different countries. Xiaoqi’s paper is entitled “Numerical Studies of the Acoustic Impedance of Micro-perforated Panels under Grazing Flow” and co-authored with his supervisor Prof. L. Cheng. The paper was chosen out of a total of 200 eligible papers presented during the congress by a panel composed of the IIAV board of directors.

Success in securing GRF 2018/19

In the 2018/2019 results of grants from the Research Grants Council’s General Research Fund (GRF) announced in June 2018, ME’s success rate for the GRF was 33% in 2018/19 exercise. Seven of our GRF proposals were funded and listed below: Principal Investigator Project Title Dr AN Liang Understanding charge transport phenomena in photoelectrochemical storage cells for solar energy storage Prof. CHENG Li Thermo-Acoustic Oscillations: Mechanism Exploration and Control Based on Delay Differential Equation Theories Under a Fully- coupled Modelling Framework Dr TANG Hui Study of magnetic hyperthermia based cancer treatment using a holistic simulation framework Prof. WEN Chih-yung Investigation and Optimization of Porous Coatings on the Stabilization of Hypersonic Boundary-Layer Flows Dr ZHENG Guangping Frenkel-Kontorova model based simulation on the deformation mechanisms in nanostructured high-entropy alloys Prof. ZHOU Li Min Size- and temperature-dependent phase transition in NASICON-type material on Li+- and Na+‐(de)intercalation Dr ZHU Jie Investigation on broadband transition delay and stability control of hypersonic turbulent boundary layer via gradient-index acoustic metasurface

ME PhD student won the Best Presentation Award at ICMMP 2018

Mr Haopeng YANG, a PhD student from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of PolyU, won the Best Presentation Award at the Fourth International Conference on Metallic Materials and Processing (ICMMP) on 20 June 2018. ICMMP 2018 was organized by the Northwestern Polytechnical University. This conference aimed at bringing together world materials communities to discuss and review the recent development and progress in materials science, processing and computational materials with the focus on metals. Meanwhile, ICMMP helped to facilitate more fruitful cooperation among researchers, and to look into the future of metal research. In this conference, 7 students and 5 full-time research fellows out of 58 participants were awarded the Best Presentation Award. Mr YANG’s awarded presentation was “Investigation on semi-solid forming of A356 alloy for fabrication of micro-scaled and fine-pitched pillar parts for semiconductor and microelectronics applications”. Mr YANG is a 4th-year PhD student, under the joint supervision of Prof. Mingwang FU and Dr Sandy TO. YANG is devoted to doing research into hot working material behaviors of Mg and Al alloys.