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By
Michelle Osmond
An oil pipeline bursts and spills
crude oil in an environmentally sensitive area. Radioactive
coolant leaks out of a nuclear reactor into a local river. Millions
of dollars are spent and the production of offshore oil is slowed
or prevented. These are all issues surrounding the development
of new sources of energy that are essential to maintaining the
modern lifestyle we enjoy and often take for granted.
These issues are also the motivating factors for design engineers
to try to improve safety and cost in mechanical components and
structures. Recently, Drs. Rangaswamy Seshadri and Li Pan won
a Best Paper Award for research that will help design engineers
do just that. It provides engineers with new methods for analyzing
problems in oil and gas, the petro-chemical and nuclear industries,
giving them a simplified analysis of complex problems; a valuable
aid in the preliminary design phase.
Dr. Seshadri says this award reinforces the fact that Memorial
students are receiving the best education and training. “This
award tells me that my peers have recognized the quality of
work of all researchers here at the Faculty of Engineering.
All faculty are involved in academically preparing students
and students build on the research of other faculty and benefit
greatly from it.”
He adds the public should know that the research being done
at Memorial can be directly applied to things that matter in
their everyday lives. “Everyone needs to know if the facilities
are reliable and safe. And this research is improving that reliability.”
Dennis Dueck, manager in Nuclear Engineering with Babcock &
Wilcox Canada Ltd., agrees. “We appreciate the technical
excellence and work ethic of our employees who are graduates
of the engineering program at Memorial. Dr. Seshadri maintains
an important link between our industry and the academic program
at MUN.”
The Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) Best
Paper Award is presented to the author of the Best or Most Outstanding
Paper published in the CSME Transactions in the preceding year.
Dr. Seshadri is a professor and the Canada Research Chair in
Asset Integrity Management at the Faculty of Engineering and
Applied Science. Dr. Pan is a PhD from Memorial Engineering
and is currently a senior design engineer with Babcock and Wilcox
Co., Cambridge, Ontario. Their paper is titled Limit Analysis
for Anisotropic Solids using Variational Principle and Repeated
Elastic Finite Element Analyses. Dr. Seshardri and Dr. Pan will
accept their award at the CSME Forum 2004 taking place from
June 1-4 at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. |
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issue: June 10, 2004
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