CRG Engineers Speak to Honors Seminar Students

CRG engineers Chris Hemmelgarn and Bryan Pelley presented technology updates, coordinated hands-on experiments, and led discussion with a group of high school students involved in the the Honor Seminars of Metropolitan Dayton on October 4, 2007. The Honors Seminar program was formed in February 1962 to provide the opportunity for outstanding high school students to work and study with highly qualified professional people. The program successfully enlists technologists, scientists, educators, and other top talent in the greater Dayton community.

Hemmelgarn and Pelley, both systems engineers, provided students with background on smart materials and shape memory polymers. Students were then given samples of SMP to manipulate while brainstorming possible uses for the high-performance resin. The students presented their ideas and discussed the properties of the material. The engineers then illustrated how CRG incorporates and develops SMP technologies and outlined real applications, including deployable structures for space and terrestrial uses and self-healing structures for aerospace. (10-5-2007)