Hello everyone. I am really excited to be writing this as the newest member to Team Endurica! I am really enjoying my on-boarding with Will and the team thus far. I continue to learn all the capabilities that the Endurica software has to offer, along with all the services that Endurica the company offers. I’m looking forward to using my knowledge and experience with modeling and simulation combined with expertise in fatigue and fracture in polymers to bring value to Endurica’s customers.
Endurica’s software and services enable customers to monitor, predict and improve the endurance of products. This has a positive impact on many of today’s contemporary questions. For example, for sustainability, customers need to evaluate the durability impact of using a material with a more sustainable source, or one with better recyclability or re-useability in place of an existing material. Even re-designing a component to use less material, or to last longer is more sustainable. For electric vehicles, many of the elastomeric components are called on to carry higher loads and higher torques in the case of tires. And, for fleet operations, Endurica can be used to monitor the health of elastomeric systems and predict when maintenance will be needed.
I feel I have a good background to help both Will and the team at Endurica as well as Endurca’s many and wide-ranging customers. As many of you know, I recently retired from Goodyear after nearly 36 years with that great company. While I was at Goodyear, I worked with many wonderful and capable people, and I was fortunate to have many fulfilling experiences and roles. Some
include developing fundamental technology, developing products–specifically Aviation Tires and Retreads, various people leadership roles, and finally a high-level technical leader role responsible for technical strategy. While at Goodyear, I was able to publish several papers on topics such as fracture mechanics of rubber in tires, temperature distribution and rolling resistance prediction for tires, crack growth in twisted rubber disks, and continuum damage analysis of cord-rubber structures. I served on The Tire Society Executive Committee for 8 years as Treasurer. One of my long-term contributions at Goodyear was to the 30-year partnership with Sandia National Laboratories.
For my formal training, I spent 10 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that culminated in a PhD in Engineering Mechanics. My masters work focused on structural dynamics while my PhD research was on crack growth in polyethylene. The application of my PhD work was for the durability evaluation of natural gas distribution pipelines. The crack growth evaluation in (high density, high molecular weight) polyethylene required development of viscoelastic material laws and characterization as well as crack growth measurement systems, means to measure strain distributions, and use of viscoelastic crack growth theories.
On a personal note, my wife Sheri and I have two adult children. Amanda is teaching 2nd grade at a school near Columbus, OH, and Zachary is a junior pursuing a Finance degree at Regis University in Denver. One of my passions is flying, and I’ve had my private pilot’s license for many years. One of my most memorable flying trips was to New Mexico and Colorado. The photo shows my plane with the sun rising over the Sandia mountains in Albuquerque, NM.
I’m looking forward meeting and talking with Endurica’s customers in the coming months and learning about their needs and challenges concerning the use of elastomers and polymers for component design.
