Computer Aided Design and Materials Engineering

Professor F. Ben Amara
Development of computer aided design tools for the analysis and design of control strategies for classes of nonlinear dynamic systems in emerging application areas.

Professor B. Benhabib
Development of information-management systems for CAD geometric data.  Development of feature-based design systems.

Professor R. Ben Mrad
Development of precision positioning tools and linear motors, mechatronic design, control of piezo-ceramic actuators, modeling and analysis of industrial systems, non-linear control, and non-stationary and stochastic signals analysis.

Professor W.L. Cleghorn
Computer Aided Analysis and Design of Mechanical Systems: Optimum forces in a robot gripper, employing game theory; Design of a Geneva mechanism with curved slots; Kinematic analysis of positive displacement pumps.

Professor M.S. Fox
Concurrent engineering; Collaboration; Case-based reasoning; Engineering-knowledge representation; World-wide-web interfaces; Engineering management.

Professor A. Mandelis
Research in in-situ, non-contact, non-destructive evaluation of industrial electronic materials, especially GaAs and Si substrates and device-level chips: Development of novel laser-based techniques to probe deep impurity levels and electronic lifetimes either dynamically by pulsed laser excitation, or statically in a scanning imaging mode.

Professor D. McCammond
Measurement and analysis of stiffness, strength, fatigue and fracture properties of highly aligned polyolifin thermoplastics.  Investigation of the fatigue behaviour of Ti alloys, including the effects of biaxiality.

Professor S.A. Meguid
Design of nano-reinforced interfaces.  Molecular dynamics and finite element modelling of nano-to-macro scale phenomenon.  Multi-scale modelling techniques.  Analysis of foam-filled structures subject to quasi-static and dynamic loading conditions.  Design and analysis of smart structures.

Integration of computer modelling, computer-aided analysis, and computer-aided manufacturing in the design process through application to real engineering problems, such as landing gear assemblies and shot-peening equipment.  Development of methods for treating material and geometrical non-linearities.  Contact algorithms using the variational inequalities method.  Shape optimization of bodies in contact.  Constraint methods in finite element modelling.

Professor J.K. Mills
Design of control systems lies within the realm of computer aided engineering. Control system design problems are posed as convex optimization problems which are amenable to sophisticated optimization methods. Application areas include robot control, manufacturing process control.

Professor A.W. Neumann
Development of novel experimental methodology, both hardware and software, for applications involving surface thermodynamics. Development of advanced image analysis and computer-aided techniques for the measurement of surface thermodynamic properties such as surface tension, contact angle and line tension. Development of methodology for surface tension and contact angle measurement in electric field and its application to electrowetting.

Professor C.B. Park
Development of woodfiber composites, nanocomposites, homogeneous and heterogeneous cell nucleation, microcellular porous ceramic foams, and microcellular nickel foams. Measurements of the thermophysical and rheological properties of the polymer/gas solutions (i.e., solubility, diffusivity, surface tension, viscosity, PVT properties).

Professor L. Shu
Integrating environmental considerations with traditional design requirements: Computer implementation of traditional engineering tools for predicting life-cycle environmental performance of products (e.g., reliability modeling to predict system failure and part replacement, which directly determines resource consumption and waste generation). Development of life-cycle frameworks that consider specific aspects of product design, such as material choice or joint design.  Such frameworks may also result in building design-for-environment knowledge that can be generalized and applied to other aspects of product design.

Professor A.N. Sinclair
Research on nondestructive material characterization, by means of ultrasound.  Investigation into new experimental techniques, as well as the underlying foundation of concepts such as the J-integral and crack tip opening displacement, for elasto-plastic fracture mechanics analysis in the design of pressure vessels and high pressure piping.  Design of electromagnetic and ultrasonic sensors to probe material properties and characterize defects.

Professor J.K. Spelt
Research on degradation and nondestructive evaluation of adhesive joints.  Analysis of the response of organic coatings to the high-speed impact of small solid particles.  Surface finishing of aluminum using vibratory fluidized beds of abrasive media.  Paper-water interactions.

Professor Y. Sun
MEMS (microelectromechanical systems): Sensor and actuator design, fabrication, and testing; Wireless implantable MEMS; MEMS-based bio-instrumentation.

Nanofabrication and nanomanipulation: Characterization of nanostructure properties; NEMS (nanoelectromechanical systems) sensor and actuator design, fabrication, and testing.

Biological/biomedical studies assisted by MEMS and NEMS (e.g., cellular biomechanics aided by MEMS/NEMS devices).

Microrobotics: Microrobotic biomanipulation. Manipulating bio-materials (e.g., DNA and individual biological cells) with microrobotic systems; Visual servoing with high-resolution and low-depth-of-field visual feedback; Microforce and nanoforce control by integrating MEMS/NEMS devices; High precision position control; Assimilation of feedback from multi-modalities

Microstructure control (applying control theories to improve performance of MEMS devices).

Professor R.D. Venter
Design Theory and Methodologies.  Axiomatic considerations in the formalization of the design approach.  Concurrent engineering.  Application of computer aided engineering software tools to the design, analysis and simulation of all manufacturing processes and products.  Particular emphasis is given to the tool, die and mold (TDM) industrial sector (injection molding, NC machining).

Professor J.W. Zu
Computer-aided static and dynamic analysis and design of machinery and structures.