Fatigue, fracture mechanics research to save lives
March 12, 2014
Every day, people drive cars, fly in airplanes or ride bicycles. Every day, dangerous accidents involving these transportation devices occur as a result of fatigue. Nima Shamsaei wants to prevent these accidents.
Years ago, Shamsaei’s father, a former fighter pilot, told him about the risk of fatigue failure in airplanes. Today, as an assistant professor at Mississippi State, he is working to decrease fatigue failure in elements that make up the things people use everyday.
Shamsaei joined the MSU faculty in 2013 to educate mechanical engineering students about the importance of studying fatigue and fracture mechanics.
“Fifty to 90 percent of all failures are fatigue failures,” Shamsaei said, “so my team tries to improve fatigue life through research in areas like additive manufacturing.”
Alongside a team of several graduate and undergraduate students, Shamsaei uses grants from the mechanical engineering department and the Bagley College of Engineering to study how the microstructure of materials relates to its fatigue. He also received a grant from the Department of Defense through Mississippi State’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems to improve fatigue life prediction techniques for materials.
A current project seeks to improve the microstructure and increase the fatigue resistance of additive manufactured parts by giving engineers increased control over the creation of such elements. His team also is working on the fatigue behavior of shape memory alloys. These alloys are used in many industries such as medical, automotive and aerospace.
Prior to coming to MSU, Shamsaei worked as a technical leader in durability test development for Chrysler. He collected information about the stress vehicles undergo over time. He used that information to design tests that define the loads cars should be designed to handle.
While he was working at Chrysler, Shamsaei realized that engineers with knowledge about fatigue and fracture mechanics are difficult to find. This prompted him to change his career path so he could contribute to the field of fatigue mechanics by training students and doing research.
“Involving students in research is the whole purpose of a university like Mississippi State,” Shamsaei said. “We do research to train students for the future, for industry, for academia, and for national labs.”
Through research and testing, the team is looking to improve the quality of products by making them last longer. Shamsaei plans to take his students and their findings to the American Society for Testing and Materials committee meeting next November so that they can participate in the student competition.
“We will be very active in writing articles and papers, and attending conferences and student competitions,” Shamsaei said. “As a university, our duty is to publicize our findings and let other people use them in their work.”
To follow Shamsaei and his team’s research or to get more information, visit www.me.msstate.edu/faculty/shamsaei/shamsaei.html.