WPI Provost Elected to National Academy of Engineers
By Victoria Birk Hill March 2, 2021
CHTE is in good company. WPI Provost and Senior Vice President Winston Oluwole Soboyejo, PhD has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). NAE membership is one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. NAE membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, education, or literature and […]
Rick Sisson Interview
By Victoria Birk Hill October 15, 2020
Industrial Heating recently taped a podcast with Rick Sisson about CHTE’s research on a quench system that controls distortion and residual stress. For the complete interview, click here.
Quench System that Controls Distortion
By Victoria Birk Hill May 7, 2020
CHTE’s research on a quench system that controls distortion and residual stress is featured in the May issue of Industrial Heating. It outlines how steel parts that are used in the automotive, aerospace and heavy-equipment industry rely on heat treatment, especially the rapid cooling process of quenching, to acquire the desired mechanical properties. Yet rapid […]
Video Captures How Researchers Work with Heat Treat Industry to Solve Today’s Challenges
By Victoria Birk Hill April 7, 2020
CHTE has completed a video that demonstrates how researchers at the Center for Heat Treating Excellence work together with the heat treat industry to address heat treating and thermal engineering challenges. Research that members select focuses on topics such as: optimizing carburization and quenching processes; better understanding induction and furnace tempering; defining austempering parameters; heat […]
Industry & Academia Collaborate on Research to Control Distortion/Residual Stress in Steel Parts
By Victoria Birk Hill March 30, 2020
CHTE has just completed a video about the research it is doing to identify heat treatment process parameters to control distortion and residual stress in steel parts. The research focuses on parts that rely on heat treatment, especially the rapid cooling process of quenching, to acquire the desired mechanical properties. Rapid phase transformation and high […]
CHTE Director Rick Sisson Wins Academic Research Award
By Victoria Birk Hill October 22, 2019
We are so pleased to announce that George F. Fuller Professor and CHTE Technical Director, Rick Sisson, received the Heat Treat 2019 VALENTIN S. NEMKOV ACADEMIC RESEARCH AWARD for furthering worldwide opportunities in materials and thermal processing communities his continued involvement. He received the award by ASM and the Heat Treating Society.
Attracting Top Talent to the Heat Treat Industry
By Victoria Birk Hill September 1, 2019
An article published in HT Pro News highlights the work that CHTE is doing to help attract top talent to the heat treat industry. Tactics like building awareness through camps and field trips, and creating internships that train future talent are just some of the ideas reviewed in this piece. Because almost every material needs […]
Researchers Work to Optimize Carburizing Process Parameters
By Victoria Birk Hill November 6, 2018
Heat treaters want an effective simulation tool that predicts the carburization performance of a variety of steels after carburization. At the Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, researchers are perfecting carbon concentration profile predictions through enhancements to CarbTool©, its simulation software. Background Researchers at CHTE have been working […]
Heat Treaters Conduct Distortion and Residual Stress Research
By Victoria Birk Hill October 30, 2018
The Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) is working on research called Guidelines for Assessing Distortion and Residual Stress. According to Richard Sisson, George F. Fuller Professor of Mechanical Engineering and technical director of CHTE, this is an area of huge concern; companies spend millions of dollars scrapping parts that become distorted during the heat treat […]
CHTE Researchers Explore New Ways to Enhance the Austempering Process for Steels
By Victoria Birk Hill October 24, 2018
In the 1920’s, Edgar Collins Bain, an American metallurgist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, along with his colleague E.S. Davenport, discovered a microstructure that forms in steels at temperatures of 250–550 °C. While it resembled martensite in outward appearance, it was actually quite different. In Bain’s honor, this newly identified microstructure was […]