Chairholders
Profile
Christine Qiong Wu
Department of Biosystems Engineering
University of Manitoba
Chair title
NSERC/MCI Industrial Research Chair in Heavy Ground Vehicles and Transportation Equipment
Chair program
Industrial Research Chairs program
Role
Senior Industrial Research Chairholder since 2012
Summary
The need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving fuel efficiency is driving the automobile industry into a hunt for lighter materials. But these materials must excel in maintaining structural integrity. Another pressing need is improving ride safety. Automotive industries have long strived to enhance vehicle structural reliability and passenger safety by developing new technologies, such as intelligent structures and active safety systems. Development and applications of these technologies have led to an increased demand for developing tools for understanding the effectiveness of these technologies and the fundamental issues associated with structural integrity and ride safety.
The Chair will collaborate with the engineers from Motor Coach Industries Inc. (MCI) to develop such tools to facilitate their design and analysis with the focus on vehicle-roll safety evaluation, development of accelerated durability testing, and analysis of structural dynamics and integrity. The computer-aided design tools will be developed to identify key factors affecting the structural integrity and vehicle-roll safety that result in fewer expensive tests and better designs.
The research outcomes will be exploited by MCI and will strengthen the company's productivity by achieving improved deigns, while reducing the testing costs and shortening the design cycles. The outcome of the research is not restricted to motor coaches but can be applied to other ground vehicles. Therefore the vehicle and transportation equipment manufacturers can also benefit from this research.
Partner
- Motor Coach Industries Inc.
Contact information
Department of Biosystems Engineering
University of Manitoba
Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
207 Administration Bldg
66 Chancellors Cir.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3T 2N2
Tel.: 204-474-8843
Fax: 204-275-7507
Email: cwc@cc.umanitoba.ca
Website:
home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~cwu/
