HKPolyU Racing Team inherits the legend

The HKPolyU Racing Team has finished the 2019 Formula Student Electric China (FSEC) competition on 18 to 23 Nov 2019 at the Zhuhai Airshow Center, China. In the FSEC held in Zhuhai this year, nearly 2,000 students from 54 pure electric fleets and 14 self-driving fleets came here through breakthrough levels. The HKPolyU Racing, the first and only formula racing team, formed by Hong Kong local university students, has been representing Hong Kong to compete in the Formula Student Electric China (FSEC) since 2017. At the FSEC 2019, besides competing in the car’s overall design and technical features, as well as contesting on the racing track its acceleration, control, endurance, and various functions, the team also had to present its business proposal. It was thrilling that the HKPolyU Racing Team ranked 31 out of the 54 participating teams in terms of overall results, which was a step ahead compared to 2018 season and the best percentage amongst the three straight seasons. Achievements of the HKPolyU Racing Team in FSEC 2019 included: ranked 7th in the Business Presentation Event passing all scrutineering checks finished competing in 2 out of 4 dynamic events; skid-pad & autocross   It took the team the whole year to design and manufacture the car. Their dedication and enthusiasm have gained tremendous support from various external parties as well as the University. This year, more than 20 industrialists or organizations offered substantial sponsorships through various means like giving the students financial back-up, sponsoring materials, offering technical advice, providing a testing venue, etc. The team obtained over 2 million HK dollars donations in the past year, and the main donors were as follows:   HKI China Land Limited Kolinker Industrial Equipments Ltd. Ngai Hing Hong Plastic Materials (Hong Kong) Ltd. Dr Hou Lee Tsun, Laurence Hong Kong Productivity Council   Their dream of racing was triggered by 9 PolyU Mechanical Engineering students in 2015, who aspired to construct their Final Year Project on building a racing car for joining a formula competition. Since then, the team of the 9 core members has gradually grown into a team with over 70 students from different disciplines. It was a huge step for the students to spark a racing dream and take to the large-scale annual international competition. Their initiative, aspiration, creativity and endurance are what we really proud of. RECRUITMENT DETAILS

ME researchers discovered universality of droplet coalescence in PNAS

Glancing out a window on a rainy day, your eyes are accidentally caught by a small droplet rolling down the glass, where its “other half” is awaiting… Now, the “dating” is about to begin and the droplet reaches out to another. The moment they touch, a connecting liquid bridge forms and quickly grows – the two droplets then coalesce into a bigger one before you could see clearly what has happened. While you are still wondering why it was so fast, another coalescence has just flashed by… Droplet-droplet coalescence is of essence to numerous natural and industrial processes, for example, rain clouds formation and fuel spray in rocket engines. Nowadays, with the help of high-speed cameras, many experimental scientists have successfully captured the transient coalescence of liquid droplets that cannot be perceived by naked eyes. They discovered that, as the two droplets merge into one, the connecting liquid bridge grows by obeying two distinct rules: it either grows linearly with time when the droplets are smaller (or more viscous) or grows with the square-root of time when the droplets are bigger (or less viscous). To unveil the secret of the different rules governing droplet coalescence, Dr Xi Xia, former research fellow (now Associate Professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University), Mr Chengming He, PhD student, and Dr Peng Zhang, Associate Professor of the PolyU Department of Mechanical Engineering, established a theory that unifies the dynamics of liquid bridge growth. The theory is amazingly simple but innovatively integrates some mathematical techniques, such as integral equation and asymptotic analysis, with some physical insights, such as flow self-similarity and interfacial vortex. This work has been recently published online on PNAS (Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences). [X. Xia, C. He and P. Zhang, “Universality in the viscous-to-inertial coalescence of liquid droplets”, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1910711116]

ME Student Team wins in the ASME Student Design Competition Finals 2019

Team of BEng in Mechanical Engineering (ME) students won the 2nd Runner-up in the 2019 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Design Competition (SDC) Finals held on 9 November 2019, in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The ASME SDC Finals, sponsored by Boeing every year, is a well-known international student design competition of its kind. The 14 competitors, each are from the regional SDC events held at the ASME Engineering Festivals. “The Pick-and-Place Race”, the theme of this year, is to challenge students to design a speedy robots that could quickly grasp various size of balls – small as ping pong to as large as basketballs running in its full speed without dropping off the balls in the competition field. The first 15 seconds is decisive for the winner. Our team, comprising year four undergraduate students, Parth MAHESHWARI, Maral SHAGATAY and KWAN Kai Lok, supervised by Ir Dr Curtis NG of ME developed an agile robot which can swiftly moving around pick and hold different sizes of balls . With tactical strategy, our robot stood out from other competing robots and eventually made it to the Final Four and brought home the 2nd Runner-up! “Our students were wholly dedicated to this challenge. They were highly self-motivated to work on the prototype and well prepared for the competition. With great support from Prof. SQ Shi (Head of Department of ME, PolyU), ME technical team, International Affairs Office (IAO) and Industrial Centre (IC), our robot could manage to compete with other strong competitors in ASME SDC Finals 2019 and took the 2nd Runner-up. “Students are excited with their achievement and we are highly proud of them.” Ir Dr Curtis NG said. The competition was held in conjunction with the ASME’s 2019 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.  

ME Student Team awarded in the 2019 Greater Bay Area Design Competition

A student team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) have made notable achievements in the 2019 Greater Bay Area Design Competition (2019粵港澳大學生工程訓練綜合能力競賽) held in Guangzhou on 26-27 October 2019. For the first time, the HK PolyU team won the 2nd Class and the Most Collaboration Awards in the competition. Sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China and organized by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province and the South China University of Technology, this year challenge was to design an unmanned robot for a pick-and-place race. A total of 35 teams from different universities in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong Province participated in this competition. They are The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Macau, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), South China University of Technology, Shenzhen University, etc. The PolyU ME student team, comprised of final year undergraduate students, Parth MAHESHWARI, KWAN Kai Lok, and Maral SHAGATAY supervised by Ir Dr Curtis NG. They developed a robot which can swiftly move around in the field, and pick and place different sizes of balls from 16 PVC pipes. The team was one of the robust teams that can complete the challenge within 50 seconds in the knockout round of the competition. “Our students were very dedicated to the competition. They were self-initiative to work on the prototypes and well-prepared for the competition,” said Dr Curtis NG, the team advisor.

Distinguished Lecture on Nanotechnology in Canada by Prof. Wallace Leung

PolyU scholar, Prof. Wallace Leung, Chair Professor of Innovative Products and Technologies, Mechanical Engineering, has been invited by the Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology (WIN), University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, to deliver on October 21, 2019 a Distinguished Lecture Series in the Quantum Nano Center, Waterloo, on ‘Novel Nanofiber technology for Energy and Environment’. WIN is the largest organization in Canada working on nanotechnology. The Distinguished Lecture Series is to honor scholars in the world working on nanotechnology. The WIN Distinguished Lecture Series was created in 2008 to bring a small number of outstanding researchers and scholars to Waterloo, to interact with faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. They have hosted many internationally respected scientists, including Nobel Laureate Yuan T. Lee from Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Jacob Israelachvili of the University of California, Zhong Lin Wang from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and more recently Arun Majumdar from Stanford University. The lectures are open to the public and are extremely well attended. It is a great honour that Prof. Wallace Leung is being recognized for his research on nanofibers and he was invited to share the nanofiber technologies developed jointly by him and his group in the Distinguished Lecture Series at WIN. The lecture was well attended with the audience showing great enthusiasm and interest in various novel clean energy and environment technologies that are feasible with the application of nanofibers. The lecture was also recorded live and posted on the WIN website.

ME Student Team acclaimed for innovating Tennis Ball Collector Robot

Three final year undergraduate students of the Department, Vincent Yu Wai Yin, Sampson Chung Shan and Clarence Lau Wing Hay, as a team working for their final year project, designed a tennis ball collector robot which can search, collect and store tennis balls autonomously. The robot is able to move swiftly and avoid obstacles such as ball net fence on the tennis court. It can also autodetect tennis balls and fetch them everywhere on the court. Its sophisticated device enables the robot to retrieve balls on the edge without hurdle. The project was highly acclaimed for its skillful mechanism and practical application. The student team further enhanced the robot, under the project supervisor, Dr Wong Wai On of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with the help from a PolyU alumni KF Leung as well as great support from the PolyU Industrial Centre. The Tennis Ball Collector Robot won the Silver Prize in the 5th China College Students “Internet Plus” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award held from 12 to 16 October 2019. The team was invited to showcase the robot in HKTDC DesignInspire held in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 5 to 7 December 2019. A Hong Kong entrepreneurial team considered the Tennis Ball Collector Robot has high market prospects. It is expected that it will be commercialized in the coming year.     References: [明報新聞網] 網球機場手推車回收 機械人代勞 The 5th Hong Kong University Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition 第5屆中國互聯網+大學生創新創業大賽 花絮

ME PhD student received the 2019 HKIE Outstanding Paper Award for Young Engineers/Researchers

A ME PhD student received the 14th HKIE outstanding paper award for young engineers/researchers announced in the award ceremony on 20 Sep 2019 held by the HKIE Transactions Committee, The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). Structural health monitoring is a critical engineering issue attracting a lot of R&D strength from the literature and engineering areas in the past decades. Various complex structures including truss structures and satellites in space engineering, bridges and building structures in civil engineering, offshore structures in ocean engineering, water supply pipe systems, and railway systems etc are usually business-critical but may often suffer from vibration damage or fatigue problems, and eventually have structural cracks or bolt loosening issues. Timely structural health monitoring and regular maintenance are therefore greatly important to smooth operation of these structures and also highly relevant to public health and safety. The award-winning work is entitled by “A second-order output spectrum based method for detecting bolt-loosening fault in a satellite-like structure”, which is done by a ME PhD student, Mr Quankun Li, in the research group of nonlinear dynamics, vibration and control (NDVC) led by Dr Xingjian Jing. The work is about a systematic and effective method for accurately identify and locate potential crack or bolt-loosening faults in these aforementioned complex structures, based on a novel nonlinear feature of vibration response of structures using only several trails of vibration signals. Compared to existing results in the literature, this unique method can make full use of fault-incurred nonlinear features but minimize the influence of inherent nonlinear dynamics already existing in structures, and eventually can give more accurate and sensitive diagnosis on potential fault and its location. The method is developed based on a series of studies within Dr Xingjian Jing’s NDVC group on the theory and methods for analysis and design of nonlinear systems in the frequency domain in the past years. The work done by Mr Li has led to several publications in top international journals including Structural Health Monitoring (IF3.798, Rank 6/86 in Multidisciplinary Engineering), Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing (IF5.005, Rank 6/129 in Mechanical Engineering), Nonlinear Dynamics (IF4.6004, Rank 7/134 in Mechanics), and so on, and would have wide engineering applications. The HKIE Outstanding Paper Award for Young Engineers/Researchers 2019 is an international paper award which is organised in its 14th consecutive year. It is the HKIE ultimate goal to encourage young engineers and researchers to publish their works and advance in their professional findings, as well as to promote engineering among the younger generation. This competition is open to young engineers and researchers worldwide who are at the age of 35 or below. Three papers have been selected for the year’s Award. A Public Lecture will be organised for the three awardees to share and exhibit their findings and accomplishments in various engineering fields.

ME PhD student received Belt and Road Scholarship 2019/20

Every year, a number of scholarships and awards are offered by the HKSAR Government, and other public or private organizations to assist non-local students in financing their education in Hong Kong. Some are available solely for non-local students, and others are awarded on a competitive basis to all students regardless of nationality or residency status. To strengthen education collaboration with the Belt and Road countries, the Belt and Road Scholarships have been offered to students coming from designated counties along the Belt and Road regions since the 2016/17 academic year. To attract more non-local outstanding students to further their studies in Hong Kong, the Belt and Road Scholarship further expanded to cover all regions along the Belt and Road in the 2019/20 academic year. This year, our PhD student Luiza Labazanova coming from Russia was the recipient of the 2019/20 Belt and Road Scholarship (Research Postgraduate). Luiza received a scholarship to cover her full tuition fees and is tenable for the normal duration of the programmes concerned. The scholarship will be renewed annually subject to the satisfactory academic performance of the awardees. In the 2019/20 academic year, up to 20 Belt and Road Scholarships (Research Postgraduate) were offered to students from countries along the Belt and Road to study first-year full-time publicly-funded research postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong. To learn more about the scholarships, please visit Study in HK Scholarships.

ME Student Team win Gold at ASM Technology Award 2019

A student team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) won the Gold Award for its ingenious robot design at the ASM Technology Award 2019.  The annual event has been organised since 2015 to recognise excellence in technology, showcasing outstanding final year projects of undergraduates from top faculties and schools of engineering in Hong Kong. PolyU's trio - Roy CHOW Hung-ming; Ji-ho SHIN; and Rudra Ajay SOMESHWAR, under the supervision of Dr Henry CHU, Assistant Professor, and Dr Curtis NG, Technical Support Group Leader, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of PolyU, presented their final year project titled "ASME Competition Robot Development & Vision Based Target Alignment" and was honoured with the Gold Award at the competition. This was the fifth time that PolyU participated in the event and the second time that a PolyU team won the championship. The project developed by the PolyU winning team was a semi-automated robot with a unique gripper design for garbage collection with the aid of vision-based alignment. The robot featured a motorised platform for navigating a compact environment, a micro-controller system for wireless communication and control, and a vision-based system for object detection and robot positioning. It was developed in two stages with design inspiration from studying real-life tools such as robotic arms, forklift and dump cart. Initially, the team planned to design a robot for the Student Design Competition organised by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), in which they were challenged to develop a fully functional prototype that can quickly and carefully pick up and return balls back to the starting area. The students then showed how their device could be transformed into an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) for garbage collection using advanced image processing techniques in the ASM Technology Award contest. "The students are eager to learn new knowledge and technology, and able to integrate them into the project to enhance the robot performance and functionality. They have developed new modules for the robot to demonstrate the potential of transforming it for use in real life," said Dr Chu.

ME PhD Students Won Student Competition Awards in ISSW32

Two ME PhD students, Liang Yu and Liu Lili won the Student Competition Awards in the 32nd International Symposium on Shock Waves (ISSW32) held at the Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore in Singapore on 14-19 July 2019. Since the inception of the International Symposium on Shock Wave (ISSW) in 1957, ISSW has served as authoritative platforms for the international scientific community to meet and exchange ideas on the study of shock wave and blast wave related phenomena and their applications. ISSW32 is a continuation in the series of biannual international symposia that have been held throughout the world. It had over 400 participants, including more than 370 overseas delegates. Student authors were encouraged to participate in the Student Competition. Winners were selected based on the best oral and poster presentations. Liang Yu and Liu Lili are both devoted to Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) investigation. RMI plays a crucial part in promoting the supersonic combustion efficiency but impeding the ignition in the Inertial Confinement Fusion. Therefore, it is significant to investigate how to improve or suppress RMI developments. Liang Yu reported “Evolution of an air/SF6/air Finite-thickness Fluid Layer Impacted by Shock Wave” and Liu Lili presented “Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability on Dual-mode Interface Impacted by Shock Wave”. Both of them concisely explained the interface coupling as well as compressibility effects on the fluid layer evolutions and the mode-competition effects on the multi-mode interface evolutions. The judging panel acclaimed their presentations, and each received an award of USD250. Both research study is under the supervision of Prof. Chih-yung Wen and affiliated to the High-speed Thermo-fluid and MAV/UAV Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.