Hill Engineering Blog

Engineered Residual Stress Implementation workshop

by Adrian DeWald

Hill Engineering is proud to support the USAF and their objective to advance damage tolerance analysis methods through the Engineered Residual Stress Implementation (ERSI) workshop. At this year’s ERSI meeting (September 12-13), Hill Engineering will meet with other stakeholders in the USAF aircraft community to review progress over the past year towards implementation of engineered residual stress in the USAF fleet. Continue reading Engineered Residual Stress Implementation workshop

Welcome John Watton

by Adrian DeWald

We would like to welcome John Watton to Hill Engineering. John comes with more than 30 years of experience, most recently from Arconic where he worked at the Arconic Technical Center. John obtained an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering jointly with Acadia University and the Technical University of Nova Scotia, and earned graduate degrees in mechanical engineering at Stanford University (masters, applied mechanics) and Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D., design and expert systems).

Continue reading Welcome John Watton

Hill Engineering introduces ExpressRS

by Robert Pires
For materials engineers, designers, and managers seeking residual stress measurements, Hill Engineering is a trusted source for a broad range of best-in-class measurement capabilities. But while we always strive to deliver quality results in a timely manner, sometimes a job requires a faster than normal turn-around. This is why we’ve introduced ExpressRSTM, a service geared toward expedited delivery of residual stress measurement results. Continue reading Hill Engineering introduces ExpressRS

Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series

by Adrian DeWald

As a follow-up to our previous post about additive manufacturing (AM) we wanted to highlight some other activities in the additive manufacturing space.

One such activity that Hill Engineering has been involved in is the NIST AM-Bench program. AM-Bench is developing a continuing series of controlled benchmark tests with two initial goals: 1) to allow modelers to test their simulations against rigorous, highly controlled additive manufacturing benchmark test data, and 2) to encourage additive manufacturing practitioners to develop novel mitigation strategies for challenging build scenarios. As part of this program, Hill Engineering has been working in collaboration with UC Davis to support residual stress measurement activities using the contour method. Continue reading Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series

Case Study Highlight: 3D Scanner

by Robert Pires

Hill Engineering recently installed a Nikon ModelMaker H120 3D scanner, which is proving to be very useful in our laboratory. In addition to scanning services we now offer to outside parties, we’ve also implemented this technology into our residual stress measurement processes. This new capability allows us to produce faster, more accurate results than ever before. Continue reading Case Study Highlight: 3D Scanner

BAMF webinar

by Adrian DeWald

Hill Engineering will be participating in an upcoming webinar related to 3D fatigue analysis using our Broad Application for Modeling Failure (BAMF) software. BAMF is a software tool for predicting the growth of fatigue cracks in 3D parts. Starting from an assumed initial flaw, BAMF combines stress and crack growth analyses to predict the evolution of crack shape and size in 3D. BAMF provides a robust and automated link between two leading tools: AFGROW and StressCheck™. Continue reading BAMF webinar

Residual stress biaxial mapping validation

by Adrian DeWald

Hill Engineering recently published new research detailing our efforts to validate the PSR biaxial mapping technique for residual stress measurement.

This new technique generates two-dimensional maps of additional residual stress components over the same plane as the original contour method measurement. The paper is titled Assessment of Primary Slice Release Residual Stress Mapping in a Range of Specimen Types and appears in the November 2018 volume of Experimental Mechanics. Continue reading Residual stress biaxial mapping validation

2019 SEM Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics

by Adrian DeWald

Hill Engineering will be presenting at the upcoming SEM Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics in Reno, NV from June 3rd through June 6th. We invite you to come see us. This conference focuses on all areas of research and applications pertaining to experimental mechanics, and has evolved to encompass the latest technologies supporting:

  • optical methods
  • additive & advanced manufacturing
  • dynamic behavior of materials
  • biological systems
  • micro-and nano mechanics
  • fatigue and fracture
  • composite and multifunctional materials
  • residual stress
  • inverse problem methodologies
  • thermomechanics
  • time dependent materials.

Hill Engineering’s presentation will include a summary of recent work related to regularization uncertainty in slitting residual stress measurement. The abstract text is presented below.

This presentation describes the development of an uncertainty estimate for slitting residual stress measurement. The uncertainty estimate includes a newly developed uncertainty estimate related to the smoothing used in the stress calculation procedure called the regularization uncertainty. This work describes the approach to define the regularization uncertainty, shows the usefulness of the uncertainty estimate in a numerical experiment and a repeatability study. The uncertainty estimate is shown to meet an acceptance criterion that compares the calculated (measured) stress ± its uncertainty estimate to the true value for the numerical experiment or the mean stress from the repeatability study. This works shows the regularization uncertainty estimate to be a necessary contributor to the uncertainty in slitting and additionally the uncertainty estimate developed here reasonably predicts the uncertainty present in slitting method residual stress measurements.

If you are planning to attend the conference please stop by to discuss Hill Engineering’s capabilities in fatigue analysis and design and residual stress measurement . Please contact us for more information.

Meet our new 3D scanner

by Robert Pires
We at Hill Engineering are always looking for ways to improve the accuracy and efficiency of our laboratory. That’s why we recently acquired a 3D scanner for our laboratory, which will aid in many aspects of our residual stress measurement processes, as well as enable us to provide further services to our customers. In the newest video on our YouTube channel , we discuss some of the highlights of this tool. Continue reading Meet our new 3D scanner