College of Engineering News
2024
New Fatigue Tester Advances Engineering Research Opportunities
A high-temperature ultrasonic fatigue tester is expected to create significant new opportunities for student and faculty researchers at The University of Toledo College of Engineering.
“We’re grateful to the U.S. Department of Defense, which funded its purchase under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program,” said Dr. Meysam Haghshenas, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and director of the Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory. “This is a very specialized piece of equipment, and we are excited to be the only academic research lab in the country to have onsite access to this model. It’s going to enable us to pursue exciting and cutting-edge research in partnership with a wide variety of organizations including the U.S. Department of Defense.”
Dr. Meysam Haghshenas, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, holds an hourglass test specimen in front of the new high-temperature ultrasonic fatigue tester in the the Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory.
The U.S. Department of Defense awarded a total of $59 million to 147 university researchers for fiscal year 2023 under the highly competitive Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP). These awards have financed the purchase of research equipment at 77 institutions across 30 states, enabling universities to perform state-of-the-art research.
Haghshenas and UToledo received $237,205 in an equipment grant sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The funds covered the purchase and installation of the high-temperature ultrasonic fatigue tester, which was installed this month in Haghshenas’ Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory.
“The University of Toledo and Dr. Haghshenas are to be commended for securing this major award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to advance science and benefit both student and faculty researchers,” said Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District and is a senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. “Nationwide, only 147 researchers were selected as part of the Department of Defense University Research Instrumentation Program. This investment in high-temperature ultrasonic fatigue testing expands the capabilities of UToledo’s Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory and places it at the forefront of cutting-edge of high science and federal research.”
The new equipment joins five fatigue testers already at the College of Engineering, three of which are in the Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory. The new high-temperature ultrasonic fatigue tester expands the capabilities of these older machines by allowing researchers to now test materials under elevated temperatures and very high rates of cyclic loading (20,000 cycles).
Fatigue is defined as failure under cyclic loading, which is the application of repeated stresses or strains on a structural component. It’s essentially the data-backed study of wear-and-tear on materials with moving components, like an engine, a propeller or even a bridge bearing the weight of vehicles that travel across it over decades.
It should never be left up to chance or guesswork, Haghshenas said.
“Fatigue is responsible for up to 90% of all mechanical failures,” Haghshenas said. “And those failures can be catastrophic, as we see in examples like plane crashes and bridge collapses that are reported in the news. That’s why it’s so important that we study fatigue.”
Haghshenas is currently a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on four grant-funded research projects related to fatigue through the U.S. Department of Defense. Last semester he and two graduate students began using an ultrasonic fatigue tester to test copper alloys, for various Navy and Marine applications like submarine propellers, under highly corrosive environments intended to mimic the long-term effects of seawater. This work is funded by a three-year grant valued at $436,827 from the Office of Naval Research.
The new equipment will allow researchers to test the materials at temperatures up to 1,200 Celsius and for a fatigue life up to 10 billion cycles, as requested by the updated Air Force Engine Structural Integrity Program. Because it is an ultrasonic fatigue tester it can apply loading cycles at a frequency of 20 kilohertz (kHz), reducing the time required to conduct a test to hours rather than the days, weeks or even months that would be needed with lower-frequency machines.
“There are some other ultrasonic fatigue testers around the U.S., but they all operate at ambient temperatures,” Haghshenas said. “That’s not necessarily helpful when we’re talking about aircraft engines, for example. So the uniqueness of this system is that a high-temperature model has been integrated with an ultrasonic model. We’re excited to see what opportunities it will create for the Failure, Fracture and Fatigue Laboratory and for the College of Engineering.”
College of Engineering Adds Research Showcase to April 26 Senior Design Expo
Tile drainage systems installed under rows of agricultural crops don’t just carry away excess subsurface water. These systems also carry away nutrients, especially when a sudden rain prevents fertilizer from properly saturating the soil.
That’s a problem for farmers, whose crops and finances stand to suffer.
The Senior Design Expo will be combined for the first time this semester with a new Day of Research, highlighting additional student and faculty research activities in the college.
It’s also a problem for wider communities affected by harmful algal blooms that are fed by common agricultural nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen.
“If it rains within 24 hours of when you spray fertilizer, those chemical run straight off. They leach into the watershed,” said Ethan Altman, a mechanical engineering technology senior who can speak from experience having grown up on his family’s farm near Holgate, Ohio. “That’s a major problem, especially in northwest Ohio with the harmful algal blooms on western Lake Erie. So we’re hoping we can fix it.”
Altman is part of a team of five mechanical engineering technology seniors who share that goal ahead of the College of Engineering’s Senior Design Expo on Friday, April 26. Their working model of a multipart system designed to better manage agricultural drainage and irrigation will be one of more than 25 self-guided projects on display. Each showcases students’ creativity and ingenuity while tackling a real-world challenge, in some cases in collaboration with local businesses, industries and federal agencies.
A long-standing tradition and a requirement for graduation in the College of Engineering, the Senior Design Expo will be combined for the first time this semester with a new Day of Research, highlighting additional student and faculty research activities in the college.
“The College of Engineering is a leader on campus in research and scholarly activities,” said Dr. Patricia Relue, senior associate dean of research and graduate studies in the College of Engineering and a professor in the Department of Bioengineering. “During the event on Friday, April 26, our team will unveil several new research initiatives to enhance the position of our college in leading large-scale research projects.”
The Senior Design Expo is from noon to 3 p.m. on the first floor of Nitschke Hall. The Day of Research runs concurrently with student research poster presentations from noon to 3 p.m. on the first floor of Nitschke Hall, tours of labs from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the newly renovated North Engineering Building and rapid faculty research presentations followed by a networking reception from 3 to 4 p.m. in North Engineering 2108.
Visitor parking is free between 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. in Area 20. For more information on the event, go to the College of Engineering website.
Altman’s insights into tile drainage informed his senior design project with Thomas Codispoti, Robbie Nicely, Luke Reese and Jacob Stokes. Tile drainage is a technique to remove subsurface water from fields dating back to the ancient Romans. Its name reflects the ceramic tiles that once made up these systems of underground tunnels, although plastic tubing is a more commonly used material today.
The student team developed a system that collects the water that’s removed from the fields via tile drainage in a pond or reservoir, where it waits until moisture sensors placed in the fields indicate crops are getting thirsty. This triggers an automated pump to push the nutrient-rich water back into the field through the same system of “tile” tubing.
Another element of their design addresses the occasional but inevitable situation where heavy rains overflow the reservoir. They propose a filter to capture nitrates and phosphates before the water enters the watershed.
Senior Design Expo guests will see a small-scale working model of their system, with a dirt-filled container representing the field and a bucket representing the reservoir.
Altman, Codispoti, Nicely, Reese and Stokes credit the semester-long experience of building their model as a positive learning opportunity. In working on the automated relationship between the moisture sensor and the pump, for example, Nicely advanced his command of the programming language C++. The whole team worked through trial and error to determine the size of the pump needed for their model.
Stokes described another challenge.
“As engineers our main goal is to problem solve, and one of our problems we had to solve was the budget,” he said. “We had to develop unique ideas, like 3D-printing the fittings on our tile system. The fittings are basically identical to the ones you can buy in a store but making them ourselves helped us reduce the cost.”
Other examples of projects to be on display at the Senior Design Expo include a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine to specifically accommodate patients in intensive care units, a billboard to enable advertisers to target passers-by through object-recognition technology and a design for a pedestrian bridge across the Ottawa River in the village of Ottawa Hills.
“The senior design project is a key example of experiential learning in the College of Engineering,” said Dr. Mohammad Elahinia, interim dean of the College of Engineering and a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. “Students also get practical experience from project-based learning, mandatory co-ops and graduate research opportunities.”
The irrigation system team said they see real-world potential for their model.
“I’ve talked to farmers back home about it, and they think they could use it,” Altman said. “So hopefully, one day, we’ll have a company and see this model at full scale.”
UToledo Engineer Seeks to Commercialize Novel Method to Recycle Polypropylene Plastic
Yogurt containers, carpet backing, surgical masks — polypropylene plastic is ubiquitous.
It’s also notoriously difficult to recycle, said Dr. Sridhar Viamajala, a professor in The University of Toledo’s Department of Bioengineering. Less than 1% avoids the landfill.
Dr. Sridhar Viamajala, a professor in The University of Toledo’s Department of Bioengineering.
Viamajala is exploring a novel way to change that statistic with Avani Enterprizes LLC, his business with entrepreneur Mark Goren in northeast Ohio. Based on a technology to recycle polypropylene that Viamajala co-developed with collaborators at UToledo, the business recently received $200,000 through the Ohio Third Frontier Technology Validation and Start-up Fund of the Ohio Department of Development, which provides grants to companies in the state aiming to license institution-owned technologies to accelerate commercialization through activities such as market research and further prototyping.
Avani Enterprizes is one of two UToledo-developed technologies to receive such funding in 2024. Altered Gravity, based on technology that mimics partial gravity conditions for biomedical research, also was awarded $200,000.
“Plastics are a really good product,” Viamajala said. “They’re convenient. They’re easy to use. But there’s a lot of plastic that just gets thrown away. What we’re hoping with this technology is to turn that waste into value.”
As one of the least reactive forms of plastic, polypropylene tends to be an attractive option in the food and healthcare industries. While it is technically recyclable, and identifiable according to the standard recycling code as No. 5, the process is cumbersome and little used in proportion to the quantity of consumer products made with polypropylene. Polypropylene and polyethylene — used in single-use shopping and resealable bags — accounted for more than half the plastic waste managed in the United States in 2019, according to data compiled in a 2022 article in Resources, Conservation and Recycling.
Viamajala, who primarily researches bioprocessing for bioproducts and biofuel production, didn’t have this quandary on his mind when he and collaborators on the project stumbled into his novel method of recycling polypropylene. They were experimenting with waste cooking oil and thought to try dissolving plastic in the heated oil. The team was interested to learn that only polypropylene plastic dissolved, and they realized this presented a way to separate it out of a mixed waste stream.
Viamajala has been refining this dissolve-and-separate process to refine polypropylene since this discovery in 2021. The end product is a like-new polypropylene powder he plans to market to resin manufacturers and other end users.
UToledo is licensing the patent-pending technology.
The Technology Validation and Start-up Fund award will be critical toward commercializing his process, Viamajala said. It will enable him to scale up and produce the greater amounts of recycled polypropylene that manufacturers will need to effectively test his product.
“The scale at which we’re working right now is not particularly useful for people who actually want to make product out of recycled polypropylene,” he said. “They need larger quantities, and we don’t have a way of doing that in the lab.”
Avani Enterprizes also is supported by resources and funding through the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps, in which Viamajala participated in 2023. The Innovation Corps is an entrepreneurial training program that prepares participants to take their ideas and technology beyond the laboratory and into the world. UToledo is an officially designated I-Corps Site.
Viamajala also receives ongoing support through the UToledo Business Incubator and the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET), a nonprofit consulting group focused on growing the manufacturing industry in Northeast Ohio.
“We’re still at the beginning stages. We still have a lot to do and a long way to go,” Viamajala said of Avani Enterprizes. “But we’re excited and hopeful. We truly believe that if this technology works the way we envision, it will transform the way we think about recycling plastics.”
Interim Engineering Dean Named
A mechanical engineering professor at The University of Toledo for 20 years has been named interim dean of the College of Engineering.
Dr. Mohammad Elahinia, Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, will serve as the college’s interim leader through June 2025.
Elahinia is a global leader in advanced manufacturing and in the use of shape memory alloys for aerospace and biomedical applications. An expert in smart and active materials, he joined the UToledo faculty in 2004. He also serves as founding director of UToledo’s Institute for Applied Engineering Research.
Elahinia
“Dr. Elahinia is a well-respected faculty leader in the College of Engineering who is exceptional in his teaching, in his mentorship of students, and in his research excellence,” Molitor said. “I look forward to working with him during the coming year to continue the college’s positive momentum as we conduct a national search for the college’s next leader.”
“The College of Engineering has been a major contributor to the mission of the University, leading efforts in education, community engagement and research. I look forward to building on this rich history and track record of success,” Elahinia said. “The college’s success hinges on faculty and staff support, effective administration and a collaborative atmosphere. My role is to enable the great work of faculty and staff, advocate for the college, and be a transparent, consensus-driven leader. My primary objective will be to enhance student success, strengthen research and elevate our engagement with our community.”
Elahinia was recognized with the Distinguished University Professor honorary title in 2020, which is the University’s highest permanent honor for a faculty member in recognition of their exemplary career achievements in teaching, research, scholarship and professional service. He also received the University’s Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2017 and the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2019.
During his tenure at the University, Elahinia has received more than $20 million in sponsored research funding. Sponsors of his work include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Ohio Federal Research Network and the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The results of his research have been published in more than 400 journal and conference articles. These publications have been cited more than 11,000 times.
Elahinia holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Villanova University. He replaces T. Michael Toole who resigned March 18 following a Title IX investigation involving a colleague. He had been dean since August 2017.
UToledo Engineering Professor Receives NSF Career Award
As technology has trended wireless, the electromagnetic spectrum on which devices communicate information and instructions has grown increasingly congested.
“Because of that, we have to use our spectrum much more efficiently,” said Dr. Abbas Semnani, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Abbas Semnani, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, examines a plasma-surrounded antenna. His latest research, supported by an NSF CAREER Award, explores microplasmas for more powerful and broadly tunable microwave electronics.
In new research supported by a five-year, $555,796 award through the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, Semnani will explore a novel way to achieve this efficiency. He will look to cold plasma to realize reconfigurable radio-frequency electronics more powerfully and more widely tunable than with conventional technologies like semiconductors.
Semnani is one of two faculty members at The University of Toledo to receive a 2024 CAREER Award, which is among the most prestigious under the National Science Foundation. CAREER Awards support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Dr. Kennedy Doro, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, also received a CAREER Award.
“I’m thrilled and honored to receive this CAREER Award,” Semnani said, who joined the faculty at UToledo in 2019. “Every research grant is important to the advancement of new technologies and to the researchers who spend significant time developing them. But this is a very special one, recognizing my research and educational career path.”
Semnani’s background is in electrical engineering, in which he holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tehran in Iran and master’s and doctoral degrees from the K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Iran. His interest in the electromagnetic properties of plasma – an ionized gas that is the fourth state of matter – grew out of his post-doctoral research at Purdue University beginning in 2012.
Plasmas have emerged as an area of substantial research interest of late, with wide-ranging applications including medicine, food preservation, water treatment, electric propulsion and semiconductor fabrication. Semnani is interested in the potential of microplasmas as a powerful tool for radio-frequency tuning, a necessary function in multi-objective and multifrequency systems that allow for more efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Think of a cellphone as an example of such multi-objective and multifrequency systems, he suggested. It’s a single device with multiple objectives — voice calls, navigation, internet, etc. — that each operate on a different frequency. Tuning technology is what allows these reconfigurable devices, as they’re known, to be tuned at the appropriate frequency band.
“Conventional tuning mechanisms, like semiconductor devices, microelectromechanical systems, liquid crystals and ferromagnetic materials, are constrained by limited tuning ranges and low power handling capabilities,” Semnani said. “Plasma has two important advantages in comparison: It is capable of handling much higher powers and it provides a range of electromagnetic properties that is inaccessible with other technologies.”
In his research supported by his CAREER Award, Semnani will explore a closed-loop sensing and control system to precisely manipulate the electron density of microplasmas to control their unique electromagnetic properties to be used in reconfigurable devices along a wide range of frequencies.
“What we are exploring here is a fundamental science, so there will be countless applications,” Semnani said. “If we can control the electromagnetic properties of plasmas, then we will be able to apply this technology to essentially any wireless system. They’re all based on tunability, on reconfigurability.”
CAREER Awards support both research and education, and Semnani plans to introduce students to his work and to the applications of plasma more broadly. His award allows for two graduate and two undergraduate students to work with him in each year of the five-year award period, as well as regular engagement with students as young as eighth grade through the Toledo Excel program.
The award also allows for the establishment of an educational plasma lab at UToledo.
“Plasma is an area of intense research interest,” Semnani said. “This educational lab will be a valuable resource for students interested in learning not only about my work on the electromagnetic properties of plasma, but about its applications in various fields.”