UMBC’s fourth annual Engineers Week will feature a dozen creative, hands-on activities and eye-opening events, February 19–23, to highlight how engineering impacts society and contributes to solving global challenges. The week-long celebration at UMBC coincides with National Engineers Week, which aims to “inspire wonder,” encouraging children to imagine themselves in engineering careers.

This year, collaboration is the core organizing principle behind the week of exploration and discovery. Tau Beta Pi, UMBC’s engineering honors society, has teamed up with engineering organizations on campus to bring students, alumni, corporate partners, faculty, and staff together to celebrate the engineering disciplines.

“Leading this year’s planning has given me a chance to implement what I’ve learned from the past events and collaborate with more groups,” says Beth Wolinski ‘18, chemical engineering, president of Tau Beta Pi. “I am hoping these new events will allow participants to experience the innovation happening throughout our campus. That is really what Engineers Week is about.”

As part of the festivities, the UMBC Racing Team will unveil its 2018 mini Baja race car on Tuesday, February 20, at 6 p.m. on Commons Mainstreet, as a sneak peek ahead of their upcoming competition season The team is known nationwide for its skill in building high-performing, cost-conscious vehicles.

New Engineers Week events this year include a networking session focusing on careers in the defense and aerospace industries, and celebration of diversity in the College of Engineering and Information Technology. Throughout the week, the broader UMBC community will also have opportunities to tour select engineering labs and to watch 3D printing demonstrations. Students are also organizing Let’s Get Techy, an outreach event for local elementary school students to experience engineering through games. The week will conclude with the hotly anticipated Battle of the Engineers, a popular annual competition featuring minute-to-win-it-style challenges.

“Although Engineers Week has been around since 1951, it is only in the last couple decades that we fully realized celebrating engineering innovation is also a great way to engage with the public,” says Keith J. Bowman, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology. “We want everyone to understand that engineering is done by people inspired to create solutions for our greatest challenges.”

For the full schedule of events, visit the COEIT Dean’s Office website.

Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC’s commitment to STEM education and increasing diversity in engineering and computing fields is a trademark of the university. Five mechanical engineering faculty are continuing to expand this work through a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM program, which focuses on retaining and graduating STEM students via scholarships and activities.

Liang Zhu, PI on the grant and professor of mechanical engineering, explains that the grant will enable UMBC to continue boosting support for diverse students in the major, to propel them toward success in mechanical engineering careers. Zhu is collaborating on the grant with Deepa Madan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; Ronghui Ma, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Chuck Eggleton, professor of mechanical engineering; and Tim Topoleski, interim chair and professor of mechanical engineering.

This is UMBC’s third round of S-STEM funding since 2010. After the initial grant in 2010, Zhu and her collaborators received a second grant in 2014 for over $500,000 to support student scholarships. The latest round of funding extends the program another five years, and includes collaborations with UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program, Career Center, student life, and financial services, to connect students with a broad range of resources and supports.

“Scholarships, mentoring, academic support services, internships, research, and professional development opportunities all play a role in this,” says Zhu. “We are excited to test and document how effective these different approaches are at increasing mechanical engineering students’ level of engagement and success.”

Since the program began in 2010, UMBC’s mechanical engineering department has seen an increase in diversity among students in the major. According to data from the NSF, among the 20,000 students who earned bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering nationally between 2002-2012, 12% were women, 3% identified as African American, and 8.2% identified as Hispanic. Before the program launched, UMBC’s numbers were similar to the national figures: about 12% of students in the major were women, 11% identified as African American, and 2% identified as Hispanic. Currently, about 19% of students in the major are women, 12% identify as African American, and 5.5% identify as Hispanic. Zhu recognizes there is still a long way to go and hopes to further improve representation in the major over the next five years. Zhu estimates that the new round of funding will be used to support approximately 45 students over the course of the grant, while they earn their undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering at UMBC.

The S-STEM program is open to incoming freshmen, transfer students, and current students who are pursuing mechanical engineering degrees, provided they maintain a specific GPA and have financial need. Students selected for the program will participate in a variety of activities to enhance their education, including research experiences, faculty and peer mentoring, community-building activities, lectures and other events, and professional development activities.

Zhu has been most energized, recently, by her collaboration with local community colleges, where she and the co-PIs travel to speak about opportunities within UMBC’s mechanical engineering program. There, she highlights unique research opportunities and internship possibilities available for UMBC’s mechanical engineering students, which are major draws for prospective students.

Ongoing support from NSF motivates Zhu to continue in her outreach work with prospective students and mentorship of current undergraduates. “Attracting community college students to our mechanical engineering program and improving the retention and graduation rates of our scholars are two key approaches to supporting the diversity of tomorrow’s engineering workforce,” says Zhu. “Receiving this grant for the third time is an indication of the high quality of our program and affirmation that we’re on the right track.”

Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

by Marc Zupan, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Olympians expect top-notch performance from their minds and bodies, but they get crucial advantages from the very best equipment for their sports and the weather conditions they’re competing in. Skis, for example, must stand up to near-constant changes in stress during races.

The ideal ski provides a stiff and rigid platform for skiers’ boots to attach to, flexes to carve through turns, doesn’t break under the pressure of jumps and landings and is light enough not to slow the athlete down. But that’s not all: Skis must resist damage from collisions, absorb vibrations from icy conditions and withstand the temperature extremes and intense sunlight common in mountain environments.

That’s a lot to ask of a single item. The first skis were made of strong, flexible ash wood, but technology has found ways to do much better. Today’s materials design and construction processes are closely guarded industrial secrets, specific to individual ski companies. But I and other materials experts know that the essential components and methods are very similar: All skis are like sandwiches, stacking separate layers of different materials with all those separate properties into a single item, a competition-class ski.

Advanced materials for extreme conditions

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene is a highly engineered plastic often used in high-strength ropes as well as in artificial hip and knee implants. It’s tough, bends and flexes a lot without breaking, resists scratches, retains its properties across a range of temperatures and has tiny microscopic pores across its surface. When it’s used as the base layer of a ski, those microscopic pores act like a sponge into which racing wax is melted to fine-tune the ski’s contact with whatever the snow conditions are.

The sides of the ski base are made of high-strength steel alloys that are heated and processed to meet the demanding conditions of skiing. These processes make the steel resistant to rust and able to be sharpened like a knife. The steel needs to hold its edge to carve through snow and ice while flexing with the rest of the ski without cracking or breaking.

Inside the ski

On top of the base is a complex layer in the ski sandwich, an element itself called a “sandwich panel,” made of similar materials and with the same techniques as those used to build spacecraft, aircraft and performance race cars. The center of the sandwich is a core material surrounded by fiber-reinforced composites.

The cores of ski sandwich panels can be lightweight titanium alloys, polymer foams similar to Styrofoam coffee cups or different kinds of woods – such as maple, oak, aspen or poplar. These different plastic, wood and metal materials are layered and combined to tune the ski to the desired levels of strength, stiffness, ability to twist and vibration-damping, all with as little weight as possible.

The outer layers of the sandwich panel are made from epoxy resins – high-performance glues – into and onto which are laid engineered fabrics like carbon fibers, fiberglass and Kevlar. These resin-fiber layers hold the sandwich core structure together and make all of the different material types work as one.

Like the core, these composite layers vary in thickness and makeup along the ski. They’re even applied at different angles to the ski itself to improve ski stiffness and strength.

The sandwich panel ski makes turning quicker and helps the ski ride smoothly over bumps and ruts in the terrain. It’s more responsive to the skier and more stable at high speeds than less advanced designs because it can take advantage of the best aspects of all its ingredients. Overall, the sandwich panel is built to be stiffest under the binding area where the boot attaches, and more flexible near the ski tips, to glide more easily over uneven terrain. Each ski’s sandwich panel is designed and built to optimize performance in a specific skiing event – such as downhill racing, snowcross or jumping – or even a particular skier’s preferences.

Rapid improvement

The ski industry, and particularly its competitive elements, are willing to take risks and push limits, exploring the most advanced materials concepts to achieve optimum performance. As a result, decades of research have improved Olympic skiers’ times significantly over the years.

That work has also spread benefits well beyond the Olympic medal podium and into the recreational market. Amateur skiers can explore more advanced terrain and more challenging slopes with help from the tuned spring response, vibration damping and light weight of their skis. Recreational skiers can also go faster in changing snow conditions and steer more easily through turns because their skis are adaptable and responsive to individual skiers’ strengths, as well as slope conditions. The materials advancements help recreational skiers ski well on terrain previously accessible only by superior athletes.

All these advances happen very quickly. Before the next Winter Olympic Games, consumers will likely be able to easily purchase the same kinds of skis and snowboards that the 2018 Olympians competed on – and the 2022 Olympians will be using even better materials that help them go faster, higher and stronger than ever before.

Marc Zupan, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering- Materials and Solid Mechanics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.