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The Shot Glass Drop competition gave students and young professionals a chance to put their on-the-spot design talents to the test. This clip shows a “victory drop” of the winning design by Jessica Serra.

The ICACC meeting in Daytona Beach wraps up today. I left on Wednesday after more than a week on the conference circuit. I was ready to come home, but I confess that the balmy sunshine was working for me. (It’s cold, cloudy and snowy where I live.)

Here are some final sights and sounds from the meeting, but I’ll have more to say about what I saw and heard in the weeks to come.

Monday evening's reception for students and young professionals was well attended and, according to reports, a lot of fun.

A vendor and customers talk shop at Tuesday's Expo.

Posters were displayed on the perimeter of the Expo floor.

While the Expo was going on, so was a Shot Glass Drop competition for students and young professionals. Sponsored by Schott Glass, contestants had about 30 minutes to construct a contraption out of 30 plastic drinking straws that would protect a free falling Schott-made shot glass. Most of the 16 entries survived to the maximum height, which was in the neighborhood of 12 feet. If they reached the maximum height, contestants then were required to remove two straws each round until only one survived. The winning design won with 24 straws. The video clip above shows winner Jessica Serra’s “victory drop,” one final drop after she was being declared the victor. It survived.

The glass and straws.

Intense concentration from a team.

And the winner is Jessica Serra, shown with judges Greg Hilmas (left) and Sean Landwehr. Jessica recently joined the staff of Pratt-Whitney.

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Missouri University of Science & Technology’s Keramos chapter won the Most Outstanding Chapter Award. The chapter’s representatives, front row, from left are William Meier, Megan Gilbert, Catie Mohrmann, Andrea Els and Stephen Edgar. Back row, Keramos executive committee members Robert Schwartz, Greg Hilmas, William Hammetter, Brian Gilmore and Kevin Fox.

Keramos, the national professional ceramic engineering fraternity, meets concurrently with the annual meeting of The American Ceramic Society. The group held its Student Convocation this morning at which all fraternity business is reviewed, chapter reports were given, student representation was elected and recognition of chapters and individuals receiving awards were made.

A career development presentation was given by Corning’s Matt Djenka as part of the Convocation.

Keramos’ Executive Board also gave out awards for Outstanding Chapter (above), Most Improved Chapter, Diamond Award (for exemplary performance and leadership) and Sapphire Award (notable performance). Here are some other photos from the Convocation.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Keramos chapter won the Most Improved Chapter Award. The chapter's representatives, front row, from left are Xiaolin Zhang and Divija Alluri. Back row, Keramos executive committee members Hammetter, Hilmas, Gilmore, Fox and Schwartz.

Two chapters, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Missouri University of Science & Technology, tied for the Diamond Award for exceptional achievement Keramos chapter and shared this year's award.

Chih-Hsuan Wu accepts the nameplate for the Sapphire Award for high achievement on behalf of Penn State's Keramos chapter.

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Greg Hilmas and Bill Fahrenholtz, both professors at Missouri S&T, are working on developing ceramic materials that can withstand ultrahigh temperatures (1,600°C–3,000°C) that will be encountered by hypersonic planes of the future. Ultrahigh-temperature ceramic materials are particularly needed on the leading edges of acute flight surfaces to withstand the intense heat that will be generated as these vehicles dip in and out of the upper atmosphere (in the region known as the exosphere) at speeds of Mach 5 and above. Similar materials will be need in the propulsion engines under consideration, such as the Scramjet engine they mention.

Although the Space Shuttle is technically a hypersonic vehicle, the vehicles Hilmas and Fahrenholtz are working on are very different. Unlike the bulky, blunt shapes found on a Shuttle, future hypersonic planes – envisioned for commercial and military use – will have a sleek design to minimize air resistance.

Although this is still basic science stuff, Hilmas and Fahrenholtz have discovered an unexpected trove of previous research: Cold War-era data compiled by scientists in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union on nuclear research. The duo are still sifting through these old papers for clues about what to expect in the performance of new ultrahigh-temperature materials.

Materials that can withstand hypersonic flight are being developed across the globe. Recently we wrote about composite materials being developed in Australia that can withstand the heat produced at Mach 8.

16 minutes.

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A group out of Missouri University of Science and Technology says it has a new method for mixing metals with ceramic that will allow stronger, heat-resistant, functionally graded materials for the creation of hypersonic and other ultrahigh-temperature aerospace components.

The group, led by Ming Lue, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at S&T, uses a precisely controlled extrusion approach to combine – in varying proportions – the ceramic and metallic base components together with a binder. For example, zirconium carbide is pushed through one tube, tungsten is pushed through a second tube and the binder from a third. The metal–ceramic combination is then extruded as a paste, but interesting thing is that the exact mix could be carefully altered as a function of time.

This could potentially revolutionize manufacturing of complex- near net-shaped ceramic parts (which can’t  be processed by conventional methods such as slip casting or injection molding).

In other words, a manufacturer could produce a component with a paste composition that can be varied as it is extruded.

The piece is made depositing the paste, layer-by-layer. The component is then put through what they call Rapid Freeze Prototyping and Freeze Casting to remove the water and polymer binder. The last step is a reaction sintering. The end result is a component composed of gradient materials with custom-tailored mechanical properties.

The biggest benefit, says Leu, who is associated with S&T’s Center for Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies, is the ease it would give manufacturers to create customized parts for aircraft or spacecraft. “By controlling the extrusion forces, we can customize the percentage composition of each of the materials in the final product,” says Leu, who worked on the project with Greg Hilmas, a professor of materials science and engineering  and Robert Landers, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Another benefit is that the process cuts the amount of polymer needed to bind the metal and ceramic.

“In order to create high-performance combustion components or high-performance hypersonic vehicles that can sustain extreme heat and minimize thermal stresses, these types of functionally graded materials will be needed,” says Leu.

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