Robert Pires, Author at Hill Engineering

HE Hobby Spotlight: Camille

by Robert Pires

Beautifully baked sourdough loaves a la Camille.

The year 2020 has made some interesting changes to the way we live our lives. For a lot of folks, this has been spending more time at home than ever before. If you didn’t have anything but your thoughts to keep you company during the unrelenting hours, you might yourself going mad. Luckily, some of our Hill Engineering team members have found fun hobbies during the quarantine, for those rare moments when their minds are not occupied by residual stress.

HE Pet Spotlight: Sir Loin

by Robert Pires

Unless you’re a sponge living under the sea, you probably don’t have an aquatic snail as your primary pet. That’s not the case in my household, however, where our only non-human friend is Sir Loin, the freshwater ramshorn snail.

Coronavirus response efforts at Hill Engineering

by Robert Pires

The world has changed drastically in the past few months. With cases of the Novel Coronavirus on the rise in California and in the United States, Hill Engineering is doing its part to ensure the safety of our employees and our customers.

Case Study: Multi-step machining distortion modeling

by Robert Pires

Distortion of parts during the machining process is a significant problem faced by many machining vendors. This phenomenon typically results from the release and redistribution of residual stress in the material once the part is unclamped from the machine table. When not accounted for, machining distortion can lead to out-of-tolerance parts that either require reworking, or have to be scrapped. Continue reading Case Study: Multi-step machining distortion modeling

#HillEngSTEM Summer Challenge

by Robert Pires

Summertime is just around the corner and we at Hill Engineering are always looking to engage our followers with fun and interesting information about engineering and residual stress. This summer we’re going to host the virtual Hill Engineering STEM challenge – a series of fun activities to demonstrate your engineering intuition and creativity. Participate on your own or with your family to compete for some cool Hill Engineering prizes! Continue reading #HillEngSTEM Summer Challenge

Racers of Hill Engineering

by Robert Pires

On your mark, get set, GO!

Hill Engineering isn’t just at the forefront of the residual stress measurement world, our employees are picking up the pace as well! The race pace that is. Today, we’re highlighting a few of our team members who cut through speed and strength like a wire EDM. Continue reading Racers of Hill Engineering

Case Study highlight: Broad Application for Modeling Failure

by Robert Pires

Our latest case study discusses our Broad Application for Modeling Failure (BAMF) software.

Broad Application for Modeling Failure (BAMF) enables fatigue crack growth analysis of parts with non-standard geometry, loading, and residual stress conditions through the implementation of multi-point fracture mechanics (MPFM). This user-friendly software environment provides structural analysts and engineers a tool to accurately and efficiently complete challenging fatigue crack growth problems.

Strain gage in a bottle

by Robert Pires

A representative composite overwrapped pressure vessel. Image courtesy of CompositesWorld: https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/thermoplastic-composite-pressure-vessels-for-fcvs

We’re putting something in a bottle, and no, it’s not an SOS to the world. It’s a strain gage!

Hill Engineering has recently developed technology to orient and apply strain gages inside a pressure vessel with restricted interior access. Continue reading Strain gage in a bottle

Residual Stress 101 vlog

by Robert Pires

Today, we’ve released the newest episode of our vlog: Residual Stress 101. The video is a return to basics, discussing the core of what it is we do here at Hill Engineering.

If you haven’t checked out our YouTube channel, it might be time. Our mission is to post content that helps highlight the capabilities of our organization, so that everyone can see how and why residual stress is important to their manufacturing processes.

Today’s post is a broad overview of what residual stress is, including the several techniques for measuring residual stress found in our lab. Look for future content that delves further into each technique, and contact us if you have any further questions or want to see a video related to something we haven’t discussed.

Case Study: cold hole expansion process modeling

by Robert Pires

Cold hole expansion (Cx or cold expansion for short) of fastener holes is a technique that has been widely used in the aircraft industry to improve the fatigue performance of structural components. The cold hole expansion process introduces compressive residual stress near the vicinity of the hole that slows crack growth and can significantly improve fatigue performance. Continue reading Case Study: cold hole expansion process modeling