March_AMP_Digital

2 / 62

9639 Kinsman Road
Materials Park, OH 44073
Tel: 440/338-5151 • Fax: 440/338-4634
Frances Richards, Senior Editor
Julie Kalista , Editor
Barbara L. Brody , Art Director
Joanne Miller, Production Manager;
Editor, ASM News
Press Release Editor
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Mario Epler, Chair, Carpenter Technology Corp.
Yu-Ping Yang, Vice Chair, Edison Welding Institute
Ellen Cerreta, Past Chair, Los Alamos National Lab
William Lenling, Board Liaison
Laura Addessio, PCC Structurals Inc.
Arvind Agarwal, Florida International University
Gerald Bruck, Siemens Westinghouse Power Corp.
Steven Claves, Alcoa Inc.
Adam Farrow, Los Alamos National Lab
Nia Harrison, Ford Motor Co.
Alan Luo, The Ohio State University
Roger Narayan, UNC-NCSU
Scott Olig, Vision Point Systems
Nina Pang, Boston University
Somuri Prasad, Sandia National Lab
Fei Ren, Oak Ridge National Lab
Michael Rigsbee, North Carolina State University
Kumar Sridharan, University of Wisconsin
Jaimie Tiley, U.S. Air Force Research Lab
Cong Wang, Saint-Gobain High Performance
Materials
ASM BOARD OF TRUSTEES
C. Ravi Ravindran, President
Sunniva R. Collins, Vice President
Robert J. Fulton, Treasurer
Gernant E. Maurer, Immediate Past President
Jeffrey A. Hawk
William J. Lenling
Linda S. Schadler
Iver Anderson
Mitchell Dorfman
James C. Foley
Jacqueline M. Earle
John R. Keough
Zi-Kui Liu
Thomas S. Passek, Secretary and Managing
Director
STUDENT BOARD MEMBERS
Jessica Booth, Karly Chester, Raymond Hickey
Individual readers of Advanced Materials & Processes may,
without charge, make single copies of pages therefrom for per-
sonal or archival use, or may freely make such copies in such
numbers as are deemed useful for educational or research pur-
poses and are not for sale or resale.Permission is granted to cite
or quote from articles herein, provided customary acknowl-
edgment of the authors and source is made.
materials wi tness
ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES • MARCH 2014 2
Start me up
W orking as we all do with scientists and engineers, it pays
to have a few one-liners on hand for networking events.
If you’re reading this column, you knowwhat I’m talking about:
We live in a world predominantly made up of introverts. This is
not necessarily a bad thing, but rather an opportunity to hone
conversation skills and find out what makes these brilliant peo-
ple tick. One of my go-to, no-fail, works-every-time questions
is this: “So, what’s your dream car?”
For most of us working stiffs (Greg Olson and his Lotus Elise SC excluded),
there’s the car we drive and the car we want. Perhaps you can relate. Whether it’s
an uber-practical Camry or Sonata or a family-friendly Escape SUV or Town &
Country minivan, let’s just go ahead and admit this is not the car you’ve always
dreamed about. Once you get people talking about their true automotive de-
sires, it ignites a certain spark and lively conversation with even the most serious
scientists among us.
Case in point: Last month when I visited NIST to learn about their Center for Au-
tomotive Lightweighting (featured in this month’s “Success Analysis” department,
p. 60), I was picked up from the Metro station by one of the top researchers (who
shall remain nameless) in his “summer car.” His wife’s car was having issues, as all
cars do, so she had borrowed his car and he took his “baby” out of storage for the
day. It was a gorgeously curvy Corvette a few years young in mint condition, which
he happily explained goes from 0 to 60 in 3.8 seconds. I can attest that it does.
In this month’s annual automotive issue, we take a look under the hood at
some of the technology at the heart of vehicle performance. From lightweight-
ing initiatives such as research into magnesium inclusions to nondestructive spot
weld analysis to laser beam texturing of sheet metal, much progress is taking
place in the automotive arena. Some of the most exciting research is being
spurred by various competitions.
One of these is the Valeo Innovation Challenge, with 969 teams of engineer-
ing students from 55 countries (representing 455 universities) submitting proj-
ects with a goal of winning the €100,000 first prize. Of the entries, 20 top teams
will be announced on April 15 and Valeo will grant each one €5,000 to create
functioning prototypes. Six of these teams will then be chosen to travel to Paris
in September and present their concepts in front of a jury who will select the
winning project. The purpose of the Valeo contest ) is to invite
students to imagine equipment that, between now and 2030, will make cars more
intelligent and intuitive. Many of these students will become our future vehicle
designers and competitions like this will help spur next-generation concepts we
can’t even imagine today.
So, what’s your dream car? Little red Corvette? Shiny black Mercedes? Perhaps
a Porsche Panamera?We’d like to hear from you about your deepest automotive de-
sires and technology coming down the pike that you feel is the most promising for
future designs.