ME scholar secures research funding from the NSFC key project

Prof. Fu Mingwang, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with Prof. Shi San Qiang, Chair Professor and Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a RMB$3 million worth, five-year grant (2019.01-2023.12) for a research project “ Research on the theories and technological fundamentals in integrated plastic forming of shape and tailoring of property of cross-scale structures” (跨尺度構件形性協同塑性成形理論及技術基礎研究). The project is a key project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (國家自然科學基金會, NSFC). Metal Forming is one of the most important manufacturing processes widely used in many industrial clusters, especially in auto and aerospace industries. Currently, this process has been extensively used in making meso- and micro-scaled parts or macro-scaled structures but with miniaturized features in tandem with product miniaturization in many industrial clusters. Product miniaturization is an overwhelming trend due to the escalating concern about environment impact, energy consumption and materials usage and thus multi-scale manufacturing including meso- and micro-scale is getting crucial. On the other hand, many cross-scale parts and components with macro-scale dimensions and plenty of meso- and micros-scaled geometry features, such as metallic bipolar plates (BPPs) for fuel cell, have been widely used in different industrial scenarios. The cross-scale manufacturing is also becoming critical. Therefore, multi-scale and cross-scale manufacturing is an efficient manufacturing solution for product miniaturization. In multi- and cross-scale manufacturing, there are some unique and eluded phenomena involved, which must be physically understood and scientifically articulated for innovative and synergic shape forming and property tailoring of the deformed parts in different scales. Prof. Fu and his research team aims to develop a forming technology for synergic forming of shape and geometry, and the simultaneous tailoring of the quality and property of the deformed parts in multi-scales. By using three typical parts with multi- and cross-scales as case studies, the above developed theories for dealing size effect and its affected phenomena will be validated and verified. These theories will be deployed to the study and development of the needed technologies to make three case study parts with focusing on synergic and precision forming of shape and accurate tailoring of their quality and property, and further addressing the bottleneck issues arising in making these parts.

ME Student Team wins in the ASME Student Design Competition Finals 2018

Team of BEng in Mechanical Engineering (ME) students won the 1st Runner-up in The 2018 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Design Competition (SDC) held on 11 November 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The ASME SDC Finals, sponsored by Boeing every year, is a well-known international student design competition of its kind. “Robot Football: Goooaaaalll!!!!!!” is the theme for this year. Of the 16 teams, they are the top tiers from 4 Districts ASME SDC representing 6 different countries. Teams competed each other in a modified, four-way football games. 4 Asian teams, 3 South America and 9 North America kicked each other out for the Championship Title. Our team, comprised of year four undergraduate students, Stanley GO, LAM Kah Cheng and CHEUNG Lap Wing, under the supervision of Ir Dr Curtis Ng of ME, designed and created a 3 battery-powered robots with strategic mind which could effectively shoot balls right to the competitors’ gates and strongly defense its own gate, this ended up in scoring high marks to win the competition. “Our students were wholly dedicated to this challenge. They were highly self-motivated to work on the prototypes and well prepared for the competition. With great support from Prof. SQ Shi (Head of Department of ME, PolyU), ME technical team, International Affair Office (IAO), Industrial Centre (IC) and ASME-HK Section, our robots could manage to compete with other strong competitors in Final 16, then Final 8, through Final 4 and made its way to 1st Runner-up. Students feel excited with their achievement and we are highly proud of them.” Ir Dr Curtis Ng said. The competition, including finalists from regional events held during the course of 2018, was held in conjunction with the ASME’s 2018 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Hong Kong PolyU Racing team Press Conference on 25 Oct 2018

Hong Kong PolyU Racing team met with press on 25 Oct 2018. Students will join 2018 China Formula Student Electric car competition, which will be held in ZhuHai International Airshow Center, Zhu Hai, China from 26th Nov 2018 to 2nd Dec 2018 organized by Society of Automotive Engineers of China Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) student competition is design and make competition in China, Japan or European countries for all undergraduate and graduate students. PolyU Racing team has over 60 students taking initiative at work as team across multi-disciplinary collaboration. The competition has over 50 China & overseas universities in the Formula Student Electric Car Competition. Audience is over 1500. Press News: MingPao: https://news.mingpao.com/…/ar…/20181029/s00011/1540750611012 Oriental Daily: http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20181029/00176_048.html Wenweipo: paper.wenweipo.com/2018/10/29/ED1810290008.htm Takungpao: http://www.takungpao.com.hk/news/232109/2018/1029/196043.html Press Photo Sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18OWYSCWW2TjJR4J_vhx0TlBMecz__k5E For more details: please click here.

Work-Life Balance

To echo the Work-Life Balance Weeks activity “Coffee or Tea? You and Me!” organized by the University, members of the Department took a little break from hectic schedule to recharge and maintain high energy and productivity. Work Hard Play Hard!

ME Graduates Won Bronze Award in HKEIA Innovation and Technology Project Competition

A group of ME graduates won the Bronze Award in the HKEIA (The Hong Kong Electronic Industries Association) Innovation and Technology Project Competition 2018. The award ceremony took place at the HKEIA Annual Dinner on 15 Oct 2018. The Hong Kong Electronic Industries Association has been running the competition annually with an objective to recognize and reward students with outstanding projects which demonstrate excellence in technology and innovation. Final year students studying in engineering fields from universities and tertiary institutions in Hong Kong are invited to participate in the competition with their final year projects. Judging criteria include creativity, applicability and practicability, and application of technology. The panel of judges consists of senior professionals and experts from the industry. PolyU ME final year students, KONG Miu Shan, WONG Yat Yuen and TSE Hung Kwan, teamed up for the final year project named “Design, Assemble and Test the Electric Power Supply System for Formula Student Car”, under the supervision of Dr Henry CHU and Ir Elsa TANG. The project aimed at designing and promoting a newly developed powertrain system to the market. Their sophisticated supply system and formula car project won praise from the panel of judges and obtained the Bronze Award with a cash prize of HK$10,000. Members of this group were graduates of BEng (Hons) in Product Analysis and Engineering Design in 2018. They are also active members of the PolyU Racing Team (Formula SAE), devoted to developing a brand new racing car to join the Formula Student Electric China Competition every year.

HKPolyU Racing HKF-02e Rollout Ceremony on 15 Oct 2018

Pioneered by a group of ME students , HKPolyU Racing Team will join the 2018 Formula Student China competition (FAES China) on 26 Nov 2018 in Zhuhai – a competition that involves design, engineering, manufacturing, testing, and races. HKPolyU Racing is the first ever team representing Hong Kong to take part in the Formula SAE, which is described as the largest collegiate engineering design contest for undergraduate and graduate students from different parts of the world, such as Germany, Australia, UK, Italy, etc. The contest aims to enhance students’ engineering design and project management skills by applying learned theories in a challenging competition. Established in 2015 by a few students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the team is now expanding and collaborating with students from other disciplines including the Faculty of Business and School of Design. While collaboration across disciplines is on the rise and positioned to be a major catalyst for change in higher education, the team is creating a platform for students to share the best practices and knowledge across disciplines. Students have been putting a lot of efforts into the team as to maximize our potential and at the same time encourage young students to pursue their dreams with persistence. This ceremony marks the embarkation of the competition. In this rollout ceremony, around 120 participants including PolyU senior management, Education Bureau, professionals and senior executives from the mechanical engineering field and industrial sponsors will join us. For more details, please click here. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HKPolyURacing/ Website: www.hkpolyuracing.com Photos:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z-46WEisNzzBnIy6g30AHhyOqQGYLoB0?usp=sharing

ME researchers unveiled the secret of the flicking of diffusion flames

Diffusion flames are ubiquitous in domestic and industrial applications that have been shaping human civilization. The development of flame instabilities could impair combustion performance, cause ignition failure or flame extinction, damage combustion devices, and trigger uncontrollable fire hazard. A prominent phenomenon related to the stability of a buoyant diffusion flame is flame flickering, or puffing, which describes the vibratory motion of the luminous flame. Previous experimental investigations have confirmed a famous scaling relation between the flickering frequency and the diameter of the fuel inlet. However, the fundamental mechanism for this relation has not been clearly understood. To unveil the secret of the flickering of buoyant diffusion flames, Dr. Xi Xia, research fellow, and Dr. Peng Zhang, associate professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, proposed a vortex-dynamical theory that connects the periodicity of flame flickering to the periodic formation and detachment of the toroidal vortices, that result from the buoyancy-induced shearing at the flame sheet (as illustrated in the figure). By incorporating the theory on vortex pinch-off, this work successfully establishes a theoretical scaling theory for the flickering frequency, which has been validated by the existing experimental data of pool flames and jet diffusion flames. This work has been included in the latest issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. [X. Xia and P. Zhang, J. Fluid Mech. (2018), vol. 855, pp. 1156-1169]

Staff Retreat 2018

The Department of Mechanical Engineering successfully hosted its annual departmental retreat in Discovery Bay on 16 – 17 August 2018. The retreat kicked off with the Head’s introduction and budget issue. Followed by the presentation of research matters by the Associate Head, this stimulated a vibrant discussion among staff members and the responses and feedback received will offer significant insights for Department’s future development. In addition, a briefing regarding the coming HKIE accreditation exercise enabled colleagues to understand more about the programme characteristics, for examples the quality assurance circle and programme learning outcomes. After the meeting, some colleagues explored nature on foot by going hiking to the Lookout Point. They enjoyed panoramic views overlooking the South China Sea towards Hong Kong and appreciated the tree-filled landscapes. The retreat was concluded by an open forum. Over 30 staff members joined the retreat and found it being constructive for the year to come.

ME year-2 student won the 2nd Place at the 2018 Asia Pacific Mechanics Contest for College Students

Mr. XU Tianlu, a year-2 student studying in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, won the Second Place at the 2018 Asia Pacific Mechanics Contest for College Students organized by the Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Republic of China and held at the National Cheng Kung University during 14-16 August 2018. This year, the competition task was to design a lightweight beam with excellent mechanical performance and produce it using 3D printing. About 39 students from 11 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore participated the final competition. The winners were selected based on criteria including design innovation, design methodology, 3D printing technology, presentation skills, as well as the mechanical performance of the beam exhibited during the test. “This was the first time that our PolyU ME sent a team to this contest. I am so pleased and proud that Tianlu won the Second Place Award. I have confidence that we will perform even better in the next year’s contest,” Dr. Haimin YAO said, who is the team coach and programme leader of ME programme.

PolyU is ranked 29 by ARWU in Mechanical Engineering

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has continued to make major strides in the world ranking. In a recent release at the “ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subject” published on 17 July 2018, PolyU has made a significant rise in the subject of Mechanical Engineering from last year’s 47th to this year’s 29th in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/mechanical-engineering.html. PolyU is the only University in Hong Kong ranked top 50 in the world. The ranking is based on the following indicators: Number of papers authored by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected from Web of Science and InCites. Category Normalized Citation Impact during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected form InCites database. International collaboration during the period of 2012 – 2016. Data are collected from InCites database. Number of papers published in Top Journals in an Academic Subject during the period of 2012-2016. Top Journals are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey or by Journal Impact Factor. Total number of staff of winning a significant award in an Academic Subject since 1981. The results show that Mechanical Engineering in PolyU continues to be regarded as one of the best in the world. PolyU Mechanical Engineering will continue to strive for the excellence in our academic and research missions. About The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and updated on an annual basis. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies.