Joseph Elmquist

Software/Mechanical Engineer at Kleiss Gears M.S. Mechanical Engineering 2013 B.S. Engineering Mechanics 2011 Research Background: I am currently employed at Kleiss Gears working on gear design and software design. My research work through the Tribology and Nonlinear Dynamics Laboratory involved utilizing intrinsically nonlinear dynamic properties to design a class of sensors designed to capture AE signals resulting from nanoindentation and nanoscratch induced failure events in various brittle and elastic-plastic materials. Micro/nanoscale materials testing poses new challenges to sensor and actuator technology. At such small scales local failure in materials can induce elastic waves with subsonic to supersonic wave speeds, resulting in broadband acoustic emission (AE), which in turn can be measured and used to diagnose the nature of the failure. Detection and identification of those broadband AE signals can be a challenging task with linear sensor designs. Nonlinear micro/nanomechanical resonators inherently exhibit broadband fundamental response and thus, enable sensor and actuator applications passively tuned to a wide range of frequencies.