Hill Engineering Blog

Rapid Forge Design brochure

Hill Engineering’s Rapid Forge Design is an automated tool for the fast and reliable design of 2-piece, closed-die impression forgings. The brochure below provides a rundown of the highlights from this powerful software, which can drastically reduce the time needed to design a forging to industry-accepted standards.

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HE Hobby Spotlight: Robby – Fiction Author

Over the past few months, we’ve highlighted a handful of employees and the hobbies they’ve either had for a while or ones they’ve picked up recently – when they aren’t solving all of the world’s residual stress related challenges. Our latest spotlight shines on Hill Engineering’s resident author, RD Pires (or Robby, as he’s come to be known by in the office), and his almost life-long passion of writing. I got the chance to interview Robby virtually where we talked about his latest novel, A Vast, Untethered Ocean, his inspiration, and his experience with self-publishing.

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ASIP conference 2020

Hill Engineering recently participated in the virtual 2020 United States Air Force Structural Integrity Program Conference (ASIP). The ASIP Conference is specifically designed to bring together the world leaders in the area of aircraft structural integrity and to disseminate information on state-of-the-art technologies for aircraft structures in both the military and civilian fleets. Hill Engineering’s presentation included a summary of recent work related to developing a digital quality assurance record for typical aircraft maintenance processes like hold hole expansion. The abstract text is presented below along with a copy of the presentation slides.

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New Publication about Hole-Drilling Precision and Uncertainty Estimation

Hill Engineering recently published new research detailing our efforts to quantify uncertainty for hole drilling residual stress measurements. This new approach provides a more accurate estimate of the measurement uncertainty associated with hole drilling. The paper is titled Precision of Hole-Drilling Residual Stress Depth Profile Measurements and an Updated Uncertainty Estimator and appears in Experimental Mechanics. The abstract text is available here along with a link to the publication.

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Case Study: Aluminum forging cold-work stress relief

As we discuss in a related case study, aluminum alloy heat treatment is a three-step process designed to achieve the desired properties. The process involves: 1) solution heat treatment (SHT) at an elevated temperature below the melting point, 2) quenching in a tank of fluid (e.g., 140-180°F water), and 3) age hardening. While providing good properties, the heat treatment has the negative side effect of creating bulk residual stress and distortion. One approach to mitigate this problem is the application of a post-heat treatment mechanical stress relief process.

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HE Hobby Spotlight: Camille

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.

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