Contacts

Background:

Michael Worswick is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering of the University of Waterloo and is Executive Director of the Waterloo Node of the Advanced Manufacturing Consortium. He held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in “Light Weight Materials Under Extreme Deformation: Forming and Impact” (ended-June, 2018) and currently holds a University Research Chair under the same title. He co-Directs the Waterloo Forming and Crash Lab and leads a research program addressing fabrication of light weight automotive body and structural components and their crash safety performance. His research activities encompass structural crash worthiness, high-strain-rate material behavior and sheet forming for auto weight reduction, within one of the largest academic laboratories for such research. The major thrust of his research is the response of materials and structures under the gross deformation conditions associated with forming and impact. All told, a major research cluster has been established, centred on Worswick’s extensive industry collaborations.

Highlights:

• Published over 130 papers in refereed journals and more than 300 conference publications and industrial reports.
• Has trained/is training more than 100 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and research associates.
• Has led numerous multi-institution research programs, including multiple NSERC, CFI, ORF and ORDCF awards totaling over $100M in funded research projects, and conducts research with companies across the auto-sector supply chain. Highlights of this funding include:
  • Executive Director (Waterloo node) of the “Advanced Manufacturing Consortium”, a $50M provincial initiative with McMaster and Western Universities supporting the innovation needs of the Ontario Manufacturing Sector.
  • “Transportation Lightweighting for Clean, Efficient Vehicles and Human Protection”, Worswick, Cronin, Butcher, Montesano, others, 2017 CFI-Innovation Fund/Ontario Research Fund, Partner in-kind, $2,223,680
  • “Materials and Manufacturing for Light Weight Automotive Structures and Advanced Occupant Protection”, Worswick, McDermid (McMaster), others, Canada Foundation for Innovation - New Initiatives Fund 2009, Ontario Research Fund, Partner in-kind, $9,437,315
• Founding Director of WatCAR, the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research.
• Member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Impact Engineering and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Material Forming.
• Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineers and Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International).

Research interests:

• Fracture
• Formability
• Plasticity
• Micromechanics
• Computational Mechanics
• Automotive Metal Forming & Crash Simulations
• Advanced/Ultra High Strength Steels
• Aluminum Alloys
• Magnesium Alloys
• Warm Forming & Hot Stamping

Research Interests & Lab Activities:

• Hot stamping of Ultra High Strength Steels
• Elevated temperature forming of Aluminum Alloys
• Tool and Die design
• PLC, Robotics, and Automation
• Mechanical and electrical design and integration

Research interests:

• High strain rate behaviour of materials
• Impact testing
• Sheet metal forming of steel, aluminum and magnesium
• Finite Element Analysis of sheet metal forming
• Digital Image Correlation (DIC) applied to constitutive and fracture characterization
• Electromagnetic forming

Background:

I began working towards my MASc after completing my BASc in Mechanical Engineering here at the University of Waterloo in 2017. Under the supervision of Prof. Michael Worswick I am working on developing a new specimen design for testing group spot weld failure. My work focuses on characterizing and modeling spot weld in die-quenched UHSS materials. Numerical models are created to aid vehicle designers through powerful simulation software such as LS-DYNA to build safe and fuel-efficient vehicles. As the base metal strength and ductility improves there is more emphasis on understanding the strength of the joints used to construct a vehicle with these materials and how joint failure affects the overall structure behaviour in a crash scenario. Single spot weld tests are used to characterize the strength of the joint under various loading conditions and calibrate a numerical spot weld model. To validate the numerical models, the model needs to be able to accurately predict the results of component level testing that incorporates multiple spot welds interacting together as the structure deforms. Previous work has begun developing new group weld specimens for spot weld model validation and I am further working on this, towards the goal of building accurate and reliable spot weld models that are used in full vehicle simulations.

Research Interests:

• Spot weld finite element modelling for crash analysis
• Spot weld failure characterization
• Die-quenched UHSS processing

Research interests:

• Sheared edge fracture characterization of stretch webs in a progressive die.
• Development of fracture models for the stretch web based on its geometry, material, shearing conditions and forming history.  

Research interests:

• Experimental formability characterization of advanced high strength aluminum and steel alloys under warm and hot stamping conditions using digital image correlation (DIC) techniques.
• Constitutive characterization of advanced high strength sheet alloys using DIC techniques from room temperature to ~900°C.
• The study of initial temper effects on the formability and final strength of precipitation hardenable aluminum alloys in warm forming processes.
• Application of finite element modelling techniques to temperature dependent forming processes.

Personal Interests:

• Camping
• BBQ
• Craft beer
• Vegetable gardening

Research interests:

• Multi-scale fracture characterization of next generation steels
• Fracture characterization and damage accumulation modeling of Advanced High Strength Steels and lightweight alloys
• Characterizing material under proportional and n0n-proportional loading conditions in forming and fracture
• Finite element modeling of forming and fracture
• Non-linear strain path evaluation in fracture and forming process