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News and Events at the School of Engineering

This page gives an overview of news,events and activities happening around the School of Engineering.

News

AUT-led Team Mobile Eye has won the 2012 Microsoft Imagine Cup. 

3 teams from AUT have made it to the finals.

  • Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching
Congratulations goes to Dr Roy Nates who was a recipient of the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Pro Vice-Chancellor of Learning and Teaching Associate Professor Pare Keiha said at the awards ceremony that the staff represented in the room were “the leaders in their field”. “Inspirational teachers are what make an inspirational, and indeed a great university.”

Vice-Chancellor Derek McCormack says the process of being given an award starts as a nomination by a colleague or student and follows a process which includes a portfolio, video and presentation to a panel. He says the recipients of the awards are “excellent teachers that are inspiring, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and innovative, with a commitment to their subject and an ability to stimulate learners’ thought and interest”.
AUT Engineering students are putting their ingenuity to the test to get an ‘obsolete’ motorcycle engine to perform as a modern racing machine. Paul Hanes, New Zealand’s leading expert on Indian motorcycles (featured in the film The World’s Fastest Indian starring Anthony Hopkins) wants to race one of his bikes at the world-famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

Events

Register now to find out about study pathways, course structure and content, entry requirements, how to enrol and career opportunities.

Professor Lie's address is titled "Distributed Generation and Smart Grids". He will be discussing technological innovations in the energy sector, its problems and solutions.
 

Global Congress on Manufacturing and Management is a non-profit organisation governed by a board with one academic and one industrial member from each country and current membership spans over seventeen countries, from all over the world. Apart from providing a forum for leading researchers and industry partners to come together and exchange knowledge and views on global changes in manufacturing and management, GCMM conducts conferences once every two years.

Past Events

  • Seminar on "Fractography, Its Contributions to Understanding Materials and Preventing Failure by Dr Stan Lynch
    12 noon, 2 May 2012
    WE 304, School of Enginneering, St Paul Street, Auckland CBD

The vital role of fractography in failure analysis and prevention was illustrated with the aid of a number of ‘case histories’.

Using fractography to determine fracture modes to aid in the diagnosis of the causes of failure is not always straightforward, and often requires considerable experience. For example, crack-front progression markings, and features resembling them, can occur for a variety of reasons, and are not necessarily indicative of fatigue crack growth. Similarly, brittle intergranular fractures in normally ductile materials can be produced by various, difficult-to-distinguish fracture modes, e.g. stress-corrosion cracking, hydrogen-embrittlement, liquid and solid-metal induced embrittlement, corrosion-fatigue, and segregation-induced embrittlement. Deformation and corrosion of fracture surfaces after cracking (and cleaning processes) can produce artefacts that, if not recognised as such, can lead to misdiagnosis of failure modes. Other roles of fractography in failure analysis and prevention (besides determining fracture modes) include: (i) quantitative analyses of fatigue crack-growth rates to predict lives of structures and components, and to set inspection intervals, (ii) determining the type and size of crack-initiating defects, and (iii) revealing microstructural/micro-chemical features that might be relevant to failures, but which are not easily determined by other means.

  • Seminar on "The Critical Role of Fractography in Understanding Mechanisms of Fracture" by Dr Stan Lynch
    12 noon, 28 March 2012
    WE 304, School of Engineering, St Paul Street, Auckland CBD
Following on from the seminar on ‘The History of Fractography’, this seminar focused in more detail on the mechanisms of various modes of fracture, and the critical role that fractography has played in elucidating these mechanisms. Modes fracture to be considered include cleavage fracture, brittle intergranular fracture, dimpled fractures, fatigue fractures, and environmentally assisted fractures (liquid-embrittlement, hydrogen-embrittlement, stress corrosion cracking, and corrosion-fatigue). The formation of river lines and steps, herringbone patterns, slip lines, fatigue striations and progression markings, crack-arrest markings (for sustained-load fractures), and other features of fracture surfaces will be described, and outstanding issues discussed. Being able to establish modes of fracture from the fracture-surface characteristics is vital for diagnosing the causes of failure of structures and components so that remedial actions can be taken.
  • Seminar on the History of Fractography by Dr Stan Lynch
    12 noon, 21 March 2012
    WE 304, School of Engineering, St Paul Street, Auckland CBD

The study of fracture surfaces has played important roles in materials science and engineering throughout the ages, and these roles will be explored in a series of three seminars. Dr Lynch talked about the history of fractography and the development of fractographic techniques will be described.

Dr Stan Lynch is from Liverpool in England and completed his B.Sc. & Ph.D degrees at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) before emigrating to Australia in 1970 where he has since worked at the Australian Defence Science & Technology Organisation in Melbourne. He is also an Adjunct Research Associate in the Department of Materials Engineering at Monash University, where he has given courses on failure analysis and has supervised a number of PhD students (including the now-famous Tim Pasang!). Stan has over 40 years experience of research concerning environmentally assisted cracking, microstructure-property relationships (especially in Al alloys), and has published over 100 papers and several book chapters on these topics.

Last updated: 08 May 2012 4:45pm

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