Tegan McAnulty and Yew Weng Leong have won two out of three prizes available at the annual AutoCRC student conference in Melbourne last week.
Tegan and Yew were participating in the CRC honours program, which helps students to gain industry experience by working on research projects in conjunction with Futuris Automotive.
There were three prizes on offer to 24 students across Australia who are working on projects with AutoCRC.
Tegan McAnulty won first prize for her work on incremental forming for prototyping.
She was surprised her project took top place. “My project involves using Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) to manufacture sheet metal prototypes for Futuris Automotive.”
Her project investigates the possibility of using SPIF to manufacture sheet metal prototypes to be used in cars. She describes her work as “the new 3D printing but for sheet metal. The sheet of metal is clamped into a frame and a tool is used to cut into the metal, forming a shape.”
Yew Weng Leong was awarded one of the two runner up prizes for his work on auxetic materials.
“Auxetic materials are new, so we were exploring the potential for the commercial application of this product. More specifically, we were investigating how to use them in an automotive seat cushion to increase comfort for the passengers.”
Both have been invited to be guests of the AutoCRC at the Society of Automotive Engineers Australia excellence awards dinner.
More information on the AutoCRC PhD program can be found at their website.