Swinburne’s Professor Chris Berndt has been nominated Vice President of a prestigious international professional body.
ASM International, a US-based society established in 1913 represents 36,000 members in the materials science field worldwide.
Berndt will take on the role of Vice President of the organisation for twelve months in October this year when his appointment is ratified at the 2010 Annual General Meeting.
He will then go on to become President of ASM International in 2011-2012.
Berndt is the Director of the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne (IRIS) and was an ASM trustee from 2005-2008.
“This nomination is a great honour for Professor Berndt,” said Professor John Beynon, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences at Swinburne. “This is only the second time in the history of ASM International that a non US-based member has been nominated for the position of Vice-President.”
According to ASM International’s constitution, after a one year term, the Vice President automatically becomes President of the organisation.
Berndt has more than 30 years experience in the materials engineering field, specialising in the area of thermal spray coatings.
“This honour is a shared one because of the strong support of many colleagues around the globe and especially that of Swinburne University,” he said.
Berndt has undertaken several fellowships in the USA, including a two year stint at NASA-Lewis Research Centre, and was appointed professor at Stony Brook University in New York in 1995, where he remains an Adjunct Professor.
In early 2005, he returned to Australia as the founding Professor of Surface and Interface Engineering at James Cook University in Queensland. He was appointed the founding Professor of Surface Science and Interface Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology in late 2007 and became Director of IRIS in March 2008.
Berndt is a member of 13 professional societies in the materials, mechanical, manufacturing and biomedical fields. He was inducted into the Thermal Spray Hall of Fame in 2007.
The Defence Materials Technology Centre extends sincere congratulations to Prof. Berndt, who was instrumental in the inception of the Defence Materials Technology Centre and formerly the Program Manager of DMTC’s Maritime Program. The Swinburne University of Technology is a Core Participant of DMTC.
ASM International is a society dedicated to serving the materials science and engineering profession. Through its worldwide network, ASM provides authoritative information and knowledge on materials and processes, from the structural to the nanoscale.
Posted by DMTC on June 8th, 2010 Dr Paul Colegrove of Cranfield University in the UK will present a seminar on Additive Manufacturing today at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales.
Additive manufacture (also referred to as Rapid Prototyping, Near Net and Direct Manufacturing) is a technique for converting CAD data into a solid three dimensional object.
The Welding Research Group at Cranfield University pioneered a version of this technique using offline programming and robotic weld metal deposition in the early 1990s.
Its feasibility was established for the manufacture of complex components for aero engines in high temperature nickel alloys.
Considerable interest is currently being shown in the use of similar techniques as an alternative to forging and extensive machining for the fabrication of titanium alloy parts for aircraft.
Dr Colegrove will describe the activities in this area and the current status of the research at Cranfield.
Dr Paul Colegrove’s main research interest is welding and the modelling of welding processes.
Beginning as lecturer in Welding Engineering at Cranfield University with a focus on projects on Stress Engineering, Friction Stir, Laser and Arc Welding, he is now the course director of the Welding Engineering MSc course.
Posted by DMTC on May 31st, 2010 DMTC congratulates the CAST Cooperative Research Centre (CAST CRC) on winning two prestigious awards for innovation and technology transfer at the CRC Association Awards for Excellence in Innovation Gala Dinner held in Alice Springs on Friday evening.
The awards recognised CAST’s work in the metals manufacturing sector and were bestowed at the Cooperative Research Centres Association’s Pathfinders 2010 Challenge and Change Conference.
For technologies to make better aluminium, CAST was presented with an Award for Excellence in Innovation by The Hon Warren Snowdon MP, Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery and Member for Lingiari. The award recognises outstanding success in innovative research being implemented by end users to the benefit of Australia.
CAST’s work building capacity in Australia in titanium machining to help local companies win aerospace and defence contracts was also honoured with the CRC Star Award. The award, also presented by Minister Snowdon, is from the federal government’s CRC Program and acknowledges high level achievement in engaging with and helping to build success in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) through the transfer of CRC innovation.
On receiving the awards CAST CEO George Collins said, “these awards recognise the productive relationships that we have built up over many years between research providers and industry. These relationships are at the heart of cooperative research.”
“These fantastic achievements are due to the exceptional people who work with CAST, our researchers, who are willing to spend time in industry to gain a real understanding of industry needs and our industry partners, who are willing to sacrifice production time to trial new technologies.”
CAST’s Excellence in Innovation award was for technologies producing high quality aluminium more cheaply, efficiently and safely. The work was achieved thanks to CSIRO researchers, such as project leader, Dr Vu Nguyen, working closely with end-users in the aluminium industry. CAST technologies are being implemented in four of Australia’s six aluminium smelters including Boyne Smelter Limited (BSL)’s aluminium smelter cast house in central Queensland.
According to Joe Rea, metals production manager at BSL, “We’ve seen an improvement in quality and also an improvement in throughput. A lot of innovations that come along either give us one or the other. The great thing about this is that we’ve got both.”
As an added benefit to the Australian economy, CAST’s technologies are all manufactured, under license, by a family-owned Victorian equipment manufacturer, o.d.t. Engineering, helping them win significant export deals.
Kurt Oswald, Managing Director, o.d.t. Engineering, describes working with CAST as, “like Einstein meets Bob The Builder – and it equates to fantastic research results.”
The Star Award recognises CAST’s ongoing work with Queensland SME Ferra Engineering on developing techniques for titanium machining to manufacture components for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), a new air force jet that is being developed by the USA, Australia and eight other partner nations. CAST’s work with Ferra demonstrates that it is possible for Australian industry to engage in the global JSF supply chain.
Mark Scherrer, CEO of Ferra said, “Light metals technology developed with CAST helped Ferra to recently secure seven out of the 21 contracts let in Australia for Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Project.”
“CAST’s processing technology knowledge and research skills are both high quality and relevant to our business.”
The CAST CRC conducts industry-driven research in metal technology. CAST is one of 48 Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) established and supported under the Australian government’s CRC Program.
Posted by DMTC on May 31st, 2010 DMTC congratulates one of its partners, Ryan Middleton of Vipac Engineers & Scientists, for winning the Best Paper award at the Australian Joint Strike Fighter Advanced Technology and Innovation Conference.
Held from 3 to 5 May 2010 in Melbourne, the conference brought together more than 200 of Australia’s leading academic, technical and industry innovators to explore opportunities for involvement in the F-35 JSF Program.
Ryan collaborated on the paper, entitled “Advanced Process Monitoring for Optimised Titanium Machining”, with Elizabeth Pham and Matthew Moyle (DMTC/BAE Systems Australia), Suresh Palanisamy and Matt Dargusch (DMTC/CAST CRC).
DMTC partners presented around 16 papers at the conference and provided three session Chairs – Professor John Norrish, Professor Milan Brandt and Dr Mark Hodge.
Posted by DMTC on May 7th, 2010