ME scholar co-authored a paper in Science on high-entropy alloys

Advanced structural materials with gigapascal strength and high ductility are highly desirable for a wide range of engineering applications, such as aerospace, automotive, marine, and constructions. However, most metallurgical mechanisms for increasing material strength lead to a loss of ductility. A new study about multicomponent-nanoparticle-strengthened high-entropy alloys, co-authored by Dr. Zengbao Jiao, assistant professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently published in Science. In collaboration with Prof. C.T. Liu from CityU and other colleagues from BUT, IMR, and CSU, the researchers designed new Fe-Co-Ni-Al-Ti high-entropy alloys, which exhibit superb mechanical properties with 1.5 GPa tensile strength and 50% uniform elongation. Atom probe tomography (APT) reveals that the nanoparticles have multicomponent compositions, and the key of alloy development is getting the composition tuned correctly, such that the nanoparticles can fully exert the strengthening effect and also help to maintain high work-hardening ability and plastic deformation stability. This multicomponent-nanoparticle-strengthening strategy offers a new paradigm to develop next-generation materials for structural applications. Read more at: T. Yang, Y.L. Zhao, Y. Tong, Z.B. Jiao, J. Wei, J.X. Cai, X.D. Han, D. Chen, A. Hu, J.J. Kai, K. Lu, Y. Liu, C.T. Liu. Multicomponent intermetallic nanoparticles and superb mechanical behaviors of complex alloys. Science, 2018; 362 (6417): 933.

ME hosted the 8th East Asia Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Workshop

Organized and hosted by ME Department, the 8th East Asia Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Workshop (EAMAEW-2018) was very successfully held in PolyU, 1-3 December 2018. EAMAEW-2018 was the eighth one in this annual workshop series. Four top-notch universities in the East Asia region, i.e., Hokkaido University, Korea University, National Cheng Kung University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, are the main participating universities. This workshop series has created a platform not only for academics from these four universities to exchange ideas and views in the broad area of mechanical and aerospace engineering, but also for research students to mingle together and exchange their learning and research experiences. EAMAEW-2018 has extended the success that has been well maintained by previous workshops in Seoul (2011 & 2015), Tainan (2012 & 2016), Sapporo (2013 & 2017) and Hong Kong (2014). Approximately 100 participants participated in EAMAEW-2018, delivering about 70 oral presentations in 9 structured sessions covering three broad fields, i.e., materials & solid mechanics, thermofluids & combustion, as well as control, acoustics & dynamics. In addition, two senior/junior professors from each of the four universities were invited to deliver keynote lectures. Meanwhile, discussions were made among the participating departments on continuing the facilitating of student exchange programs. All these have made EAMAEW-2018 one of the events in this series history, with the largest number of submissions and the most attendees. EAMAEW-2018 was also highlighted with elaborately designed social activities reflecting the unique culture of Hong Kong. These activities include Cantonese-style Banquet Dinner, Excursion Trip and some others in which participants mingled together and had a lot of fun. The Organizing Committee, chaired by ME Head Prof. San-Qiang Shi, consisted of 8 staff and 13 research students who had fully committed themselves to preparation of this event. It was the aspirations, hard work, and devoted efforts from this group of staff and students that have made EAMAEW-2018 another successful event in this workshop series. The next EAMAEW will be hosted by Korea University in Seoul in 2019.

ME hosted the 7th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring

Organized and hosted by ME Department, the 7th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (APWSHM-2018) was very successfully held in Harbour Grand Kowloon, Hong Kong, 12-15 November 2018! Prof. Zhongqing Su, from ME Department, had the honour to serve as the General Chair to APWSHM-2018. Along with its two sister series of workshops (the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM) and the European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (EWSHM)), APWSHM-2018 was the seventh version in the series of this biennial event, having reviewed the latest research developments and real-world applications of SHM techniques. It has created a platform for networking scholars and colleagues in the area of SHM research, bridging academic endeavours and industrial needs, and inspiring new research and collaborative ideas. APWSHM-2018 has extended the success that has been well maintained by previous workshops in Yokohama (2006), Melbourne (2008 & 2012), Tokyo (2010), Shenzhen (2014) and Hobart (2016). Approximately 260 participants from more than 30 countries and regions around the world participated in APWSHM-2018, delivering ~200 oral presentations in 42 structured sessions including 7 special sessions with specific emphases varying from conventional topics such as guided-wave-based damage detection and optical fibres, through appealing industrial application paradigms, to emerging artificial-intelligence-assisted SHM and nanocomposites-inspired sensors. This has made APWSHM-2018 one of the events in this series history, with the largest volume of submissions and the most attendees. This, to some extent, reflects the prosperity, intensive research and development of SHM today. In particular, seven internationally renowned scholars, globally distributed, were invited to deliver plenary talks, and they are Prof. Massimo Ruzzene (Georgia Institute of Technology, the USA), Prof. Qiu-Sheng Li (The City University of Hong Kong, HKSAR), Prof. Hyung-Jo Jung (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea), Prof. Chun-Hui Wang (University of New South Wales, Australia), Prof. Hideaki Murayama (The University of Tokyo, Japan), Prof. Michael Lowe (Imperial College London, the UK), and Prof. Shan-tung Tu (East China University of Science & Technology, China). Among the ~200 abstracts that were accepted after a rigorous peer-review process, 133 were extended to full-length papers and included in the APWSHM-2018 Proceedings published by NDT.net (ISBN: 978-3-00-060359-4). To honour high-quality, original research work submitted to the workshop, APWSHM-2018 proudly set up two awards: Best Paper Award (sponsored by Structural Health Monitoring: An International Journal) and Best Student Presentation Award (sponsored by SAGE). Two ad-hoc Panels were formed, respectively led by APWSHM-2018 co-chairs Prof. Shenfang Yuan (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China) and Prof. Hoon Sohn (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea), to select a paper having the highest quality and innovation, and up to two students making the best oral presentation among all student participants. With a rigorous selection procedure, the paper titled “Hole-edge damage monitoring of bolted composite joints with a flexible eddy current sensing film” (by Liu et al, Xiamen University, China) won the Best Paper Award, and Mr. S. Wakabayashi (Okayama University, Japan) and Mr. Dhuttia, T.H. (Brunel University London, the UK) received the Best Student Presentation Award. It is also worthy of mentioning that APWSHM-2018 was highlighted with elaborately designed social activities reflecting the unique culture of Hong Kong. These activities included Cocktail Reception Night, Dinner Cruise and Gala Dinner and some others in which participants mingled together and had a lot of fun. The Organizing Committee, co-chaired by Dr. Frank Zou [AAE] and Prof. Zhongqing Su [ME], consisted of 15 students and research staff from ME and AAE who had fully committed themselves to preparation of this event. It was the aspirations, hard work, and devoted efforts from this group of diligent students and research staff that have made APWSHM-2018 another successful event in this workshop series. The next APWSHM will be chaired by Prof. Wing Kong Chiu (Monash University, Australia) in Cairns in December 2019.

ME scholar secures research funding from the NSFC key project

Prof. Fu Mingwang, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with Prof. Shi San Qiang, Chair Professor and Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a RMB$3 million worth, five-year grant (2019.01-2023.12) for a research project “ Research on the theories and technological fundamentals in integrated plastic forming of shape and tailoring of property of cross-scale structures” (跨尺度構件形性協同塑性成形理論及技術基礎研究). The project is a key project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (國家自然科學基金會, NSFC). Metal Forming is one of the most important manufacturing processes widely used in many industrial clusters, especially in auto and aerospace industries. Currently, this process has been extensively used in making meso- and micro-scaled parts or macro-scaled structures but with miniaturized features in tandem with product miniaturization in many industrial clusters. Product miniaturization is an overwhelming trend due to the escalating concern about environment impact, energy consumption and materials usage and thus multi-scale manufacturing including meso- and micro-scale is getting crucial. On the other hand, many cross-scale parts and components with macro-scale dimensions and plenty of meso- and micros-scaled geometry features, such as metallic bipolar plates (BPPs) for fuel cell, have been widely used in different industrial scenarios. The cross-scale manufacturing is also becoming critical. Therefore, multi-scale and cross-scale manufacturing is an efficient manufacturing solution for product miniaturization. In multi- and cross-scale manufacturing, there are some unique and eluded phenomena involved, which must be physically understood and scientifically articulated for innovative and synergic shape forming and property tailoring of the deformed parts in different scales. Prof. Fu and his research team aims to develop a forming technology for synergic forming of shape and geometry, and the simultaneous tailoring of the quality and property of the deformed parts in multi-scales. By using three typical parts with multi- and cross-scales as case studies, the above developed theories for dealing size effect and its affected phenomena will be validated and verified. These theories will be deployed to the study and development of the needed technologies to make three case study parts with focusing on synergic and precision forming of shape and accurate tailoring of their quality and property, and further addressing the bottleneck issues arising in making these parts.

ME Student Team wins in the ASME Student Design Competition Finals 2018

Team of BEng in Mechanical Engineering (ME) students won the 1st Runner-up in The 2018 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Design Competition (SDC) held on 11 November 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The ASME SDC Finals, sponsored by Boeing every year, is a well-known international student design competition of its kind. “Robot Football: Goooaaaalll!!!!!!” is the theme for this year. Of the 16 teams, they are the top tiers from 4 Districts ASME SDC representing 6 different countries. Teams competed each other in a modified, four-way football games. 4 Asian teams, 3 South America and 9 North America kicked each other out for the Championship Title. Our team, comprised of year four undergraduate students, Stanley GO, LAM Kah Cheng and CHEUNG Lap Wing, under the supervision of Ir Dr Curtis Ng of ME, designed and created a 3 battery-powered robots with strategic mind which could effectively shoot balls right to the competitors’ gates and strongly defense its own gate, this ended up in scoring high marks to win the competition. “Our students were wholly dedicated to this challenge. They were highly self-motivated to work on the prototypes and well prepared for the competition. With great support from Prof. SQ Shi (Head of Department of ME, PolyU), ME technical team, International Affair Office (IAO), Industrial Centre (IC) and ASME-HK Section, our robots could manage to compete with other strong competitors in Final 16, then Final 8, through Final 4 and made its way to 1st Runner-up. Students feel excited with their achievement and we are highly proud of them.” Ir Dr Curtis Ng said. The competition, including finalists from regional events held during the course of 2018, was held in conjunction with the ASME’s 2018 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Hong Kong PolyU Racing team Press Conference on 25 Oct 2018

Hong Kong PolyU Racing team met with press on 25 Oct 2018. Students will join 2018 China Formula Student Electric car competition, which will be held in ZhuHai International Airshow Center, Zhu Hai, China from 26th Nov 2018 to 2nd Dec 2018 organized by Society of Automotive Engineers of China Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) student competition is design and make competition in China, Japan or European countries for all undergraduate and graduate students. PolyU Racing team has over 60 students taking initiative at work as team across multi-disciplinary collaboration. The competition has over 50 China & overseas universities in the Formula Student Electric Car Competition. Audience is over 1500. Press News: MingPao: https://news.mingpao.com/…/ar…/20181029/s00011/1540750611012 Oriental Daily: http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20181029/00176_048.html Wenweipo: paper.wenweipo.com/2018/10/29/ED1810290008.htm Takungpao: http://www.takungpao.com.hk/news/232109/2018/1029/196043.html Press Photo Sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18OWYSCWW2TjJR4J_vhx0TlBMecz__k5E For more details: please click here.

Work-Life Balance

To echo the Work-Life Balance Weeks activity “Coffee or Tea? You and Me!” organized by the University, members of the Department took a little break from hectic schedule to recharge and maintain high energy and productivity. Work Hard Play Hard!

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]