Upcoming Seminars
Golf Club R&D Process
April 23, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Todd Beach
Golf equipment research and development (R&D) has evolved into a sophisticated process which uses some of the best available materials and manufacturing methods to create products that enhance performance every year for both high level tour professionals and amateurs alike. The Physics of golf can be very challenging to model, test and optimize as the ball goes from 0 to 190 mph in 0.5 milliseconds for a top professional driver. The golf club engineer needs to deeply understand all the key parameters (both club and ball) during this violent collision to design them to have the proper speed, launch angle, spin, sound, feel, aesthetics, durability and cost/producibility. The golf equipment industry is a multi-billion dollar global industry, with millions of clubs and balls manufactured and sold every year. Golf companies need to have a specialized team and a development process that allows them to be competitive in this industry. The most successful companies manage to have their products validated by key influencers and top professionals (pyramid of influence), and must stand up against competition under camparison testing or fitting using readily available launch monitors. The products are sourced globally, produced in high volume and sold into a seasonal market. Marketing helps drive demand, and the process needs to be agile enough to react to market feedback, new technologies, intellectual property (IP) and any new rule changes (USGA) each year. This seminar will give an overview of these challenges and associated product development process that can be used to successfully develop products for this industry.
Past Seminars
9
“Understanding the Use of Bentonite as a Buffer Material for the Geological Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Waste: Experiments and Numerical Modeling
Speaker: LianGe Zheng
Disposal of high-level radioactive waste in geologic repositories involves a multi-barrier system that comprises of an engineered barrier system (EBS) and the host rock (or natural barrier system). One of the common components of the EBS is a bentonite buffer material which has several beneficial features such as a low permeability as well as a high swelling and retardation capacity. Bentonite is a very complex geo-material: it is composed of swelling clay minerals (i.e.
FRP-Confined RC Columns with Transverse Steel Confinement: From Finite Element Modeling to Reliability-Based Calibration of Design Equations
March 02, 2022 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Michele Barbato, Ph.D
External confinement of reinforced concrete (RC) columns with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) wraps is a technique extensively used for strengthening and retrofit of structurally deficient columns. Due to modern design codes’ requirements, new RC columns tend to have higher amounts of both longitudinal and transverse steel when compared to older columns.
28
Sequential Excavation Method (SEM) for the San Diego Courthouse Commons Tunnel Project
Speaker: Tom Pennington, PE, P.Eng, M. ASCE
This seminar will present the recent application of Sequential Excavation Method (SEM) tunneling techniques used for construction of the Courthouse Commons (COCO) Tunnel in downtown San Diego. The COCO Tunnel is a component of the larger Courthouse Commons Development Project and involved construction of a 300-foot long, 28-foot diameter tunnel located directly beneath an existing multi-story building.
28
Sequential Excavation Method (SEM) for the San Diego Courthouse Commons Tunnel Project
Speaker: Tom Pennington, PE, P.Eng, M. ASCE
This seminar will present the recent application of Sequential Excavation Method (SEM) tunneling techniques used for construction of the Courthouse Commons (COCO) Tunnel in downtown San Diego. The COCO Tunnel is a component of the larger Courthouse Commons Development Project and involved construction of a 300-foot long, 28-foot diameter tunnel located directly beneath an existing multi-story building.
23
Safety and Certification of Discontinuous Fiber Composites (DFCs) For Aerospace Applications: Design, Testing, and Computational Modeling
Speaker: Marco Salviato, PhD
Composite materials are finding increasing use across the most important industrial sectors including e.g. aerospace, automotive, and wind energy. This is owed to their excellent specific mechanical properties and their taylorability paving new avenues for structural optimization and weight savings. Engineering marvels such as the Boeing 787 have already proven the benefits of composites and showed that it is possible to adopt these materials in the commercial sector.
16
Understanding Seismic Retrofit, Adaptive Reuse and Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings
Speaker: Matt Skokan, Ph.D., S.E. & Robert Randall, S.E.
This seminar will provide an overall understanding of seismic retrofit and adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Topics covered will include a discussion of the following:
9
Geotechnical Conceptual Design for the Planned Redevelopment of Treasure Island, California
Speaker: Jeff Braun, Kevin McFadden, Manasa Vijayakumar, & Christopher Stouffer
The presentation addresses mitigation concepts for the geotechnical challenges that face the proposed redevelopment of Treasure Island. The island is manmade, created in 1936-1937 for the World’s Fair. It was constructed by placing approximately 30-million cubic yards of dredged sand fill over a sand shoal. After the World’s Fair in 1940, the Navy assumed control of the island through an exchange with the City of SF for Mills field in Millbrae. During WWII, Treasure Island became an active naval base until it was decommissioned in 1997.
Physics-based Modeling of Heterogeneous and Additively Manufactured Materials: Combining Finite Element and Data-Driven Approaches
February 02, 2022 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Maryam Shakiba
This presentation discusses finite element and physics-based data-driven modeling of progressive damage in fiber-reinforced composites microstructure. We focus on two- and three-dimensional representations of additively manufactured composites. Such simulations are critical in order to design optimized composites for additive manufacturing. In fiber-reinforced composites, cracks initiate around the fibers aligned transversely to the loading direction.
Blast-Liquefaction Tests to Evaluate the Deep, In Situ, Nonlinear-Inelastic Dynamic Response of Medium Dense Sands at PDX
January 26, 2022 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Armin W. Stuedlein, PhD, P.E. (WA)
As part of its long-term resilience goals, the Port of Portland has determined that one of its two runways must be hardened against the vertical and lateral deformations anticipated following rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the nearby Port Hills fault. Deep (25 m), in-situ, blast-liquefaction experiments were conducted to provide a means to understand the seismic performance of the soils underlying the runways without the possible effects of sample disturbance, small sample-size effects, and artificial drainage conditions to support design efforts at the Port.
19
Mechanics and Manufacturing of Architected Polymer Foam Composites
Speaker: Pavana Prabhakar, Charles G. Salmon Assistant Professor
Lightweight polymer foam composites are known to dissipate energy under extreme conditions such as severe compressive or impact loading when used as cores in sandwich structures. This is often accompanied with permanent damage or set under excessive deformation. A fundamental question we seek to address is - can we achieve shape recovery without external stimulus after load removal? That is, how do we achieve lightweight and resilient polymer composites?