Maverick Engineering Social Media

Student Profile – Michael Frink, MSE

Michael Frink knows about friction.

Friction can be a friend: It keeps your car on the road, helps to stop things from moving, takes lipstick from the stick to the lips and helps to keep you warm. Friction can also be a foe: It increases the power needed to move things and it causes things to destruct through wear and heat.

Michael is a master’s student in Materials Science and Engineering. He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M in December of 2005, and then joined L3 Integrated Systems in Greenville, Texas as a structural design engineer. While there, he became interested in different materials, their applications and how they reacted to different environments. Wanting to increase his knowledge about them, Michael decided to get a degree in materials science and engineering.

He arrived at UT Arlington in August of 2007 and was immediately drawn to tribology, the study of how materials react to rubbing contact. Michael’s advisor, Dr. Efstathios Meletis, well known for surface engineering, challenged him to conduct studies on new forms of the common metals aluminum and titanium.

These two have the advantage of light weight compared to strength, but they are comparatively soft and their resistance to wear is low. Michael wanted to study nanocrystalline forms of these metals, believing that the metals would become more resistant to wear when the material’s grain size was below 100 nanometers (100 x 10-9 meters).

To obtain his sample materials, Michael had to take their commercially-available forms and use a process called shot peening to produce very small grains at the surface. He also used a process called vacuum sputtering to compare his results. He then took these and formed small discs that could rotate under a pressure point – a weighted rod with a hard, aluminum oxide tip. After many hours or days of rotations, Michael used many characterization techniques, including transmission electron microscopy, to examine the resulting wear on the disc and the debris created.

His findings:

These findings may eventually result in not only internal combustion engines that last longer, but also improved seals around pump shafts moving highly-volatile chemicals or enabling the production of reliable micromachines, whose metals currently clump or crack easily.

Michael plans to graduate next spring and hopes to enter the field of aerospace materials. With his industry and research experience, he should fulfill his hopes.