Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 3 Fall 2017 | Page 6

news
notes
Cheng in Scientific Reports
Associate Professor
Jiangtao Cheng was
published recently in
Scientific Reports with
the paper, Analyzing
Cheng
the Molecular Kinetics
of Water Spreading on
Hydrophobic Surfaces via Molecular
Dynamics Simulation.
Cheng Best Paper Award
Jiangtao Cheng earned Best Paper
Award at the 13 th International
Conference on Heath Transfer, Fluid
Mechanics and Thermodynamics in
July. The paper was Energy Analysis
of Condensate Growth on Superhy-
drophobic Surfaces with Hierarchical
Roughness. More information on the
research will be presented in a future
issue of Momentum.
Ben-Tzvi lab presents papers
Associate Professor
Pinhas Ben-Tzvi and
graduate students Wael
Saab, Peter Racioppo,
and Eric Refour present-
ed four papers at the
Ben-Tzvi
ASME 2017 Internation-
al Design Engineering
and Technical Conferences & Com-
puters and Information in Engineering
Conference, as part of the 41 st
Mechanisms & Robotics Conference in
August.
Saab presented, Analysis of Differ-
ential Mechanisms for a Robotic Head
Stabilization System; Refour presented
Design and Integration of a Two-Digit
Exoskeleton Glove; Racioppo and Saab
presented, Design and Analysis of
Reduced Degree-of-Freedom Modular
Snake Robot; and Saab presented,
Design of a Multi-Directional Hy-
brid-Locomotion Modular Robot with
Feedforward Stability Control. Ben-Tz-
vi also served a session chair for the
technical session, Assistive Devices,
with the topic of Medical & Rehabilita-
tion Robotics.
Assistant Professor
Rayne Zheng gave an
invited talk at the Gordon
Research Conference at
Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology
Zheng
(photo above) in August.
His topic was the Mechanics of 3D
Nano-Architected Metamaterials.
Zheng receives NSF and
Junior Faculty awards
Assistant Professor Rayne Zheng
earned an NSF Award of $400,000 on
additive manufacturing of resilient
materials. His program supports
building theoretical and experimental
foundations for scalable additive
nanomanufacturing. Zheng also won
an ICTAS Junior Faculty Award for
developing lightweight active morph-
ing electromechanical devices.
Sandu publishes
twice
MOMENTUM FALL'17
Williams invited speaker
Associate Professor
Christopher Williams
was an invited speaker at
an SME/America Makes
event in August featuring
a national workshop on
Williams
advanced materials for
3D printing. His talk was, Changing
Landscape of Additive Manufacturing
Materials.
Zheng in Hong Kong
Professor Corina Sandu
published "The Effects of
Speed on Tire-Pavement
Interaction Noise" in Tire
Science and Technology. The paper
was accepted in late July. In June
Sandu published "Dynamic Response
Optimization of Vehicle Handling and
Ride Comfort Based on Multibody
Models Using Adjoint Sensitivity
Analysis." The paper was published in
Mechanics Based Design of Structures
and Machines.
Sandu
PAGE 6
Mirzaeifar lab has paper
accepted in Nanoscale
Reza Mirzaeifar and
his doctoral student,
Fatemeh Yazdandoost
had a paper accepted for
publication in Nanoscale.
The paper is, Multiscale
Mirzaeifar
Mechanics of the Lateral
Pressure Effect on Enhancing the Load
Transfer Between Polymer Coated
CNTs.
ME faculty, students
represent at ISFFS
The International Solid Freeform
Fabrication Symposium, the largest
academic 3D printing conference
in the world, took place in August
and several ME faculty presented.
Assistant Professor Reza Mirzaeifar
had a paper selected for an opening
plenary session in front of the full
conference attendees; Rayne Zheng
delivered two presentations; Williams’
group participated in 10 presentations
including an undergraduate from the
Research Experiences for Undergradu-
ates Program.