CQUniversity’s 2020 Engineering Showcase put the spotlight on some innovative projects in the region.
The showcase presented Sam Barlow with an award for his structural analysis and redesign of the AX7500 cane harvester chassis for Bundaberg-based cane equipment manufacturer Canetec Pty Ltd.
The cane harvester which had been in service globally and around the Bundaberg region for the past five years had begun to exhibit fatigue cracking and stress concentration.
Previous assessments by Sam showed a need for redesign in critical areas.
“Sam’s project aimed at alleviating all chassis failures, while minimising increase in weight and fabrication costs – a potentially huge win for the cane industry,” said CQUniversity lecturer Dr Prasad Gudimetla
Canetec general manager Glenn Soper spoke highly of the relationship that Canetec shares with CQUniversity.
“I could not speak more highly of the university and the senior engineering staff; as a business manager I often call upon the university for mentoring, engineering solutions and resources,” Mr Soper said.
“The relationship with CQUniversity has been extremely fruitful.
“We gain access to young dynamic engineers to assist with short and long-term projects and in return we have valuable networking opportunities with likeminded businesses, and can provide projects to their engineers.
“This in turn gives Canetec big business capability, and their testing facility assists to apply engineering science to our R&D projects.”
As part of his thesis, Sam Barlow performed a chassis redesign review of one of Canetec's large harvesters, which Mr Soper said is used mainly for the domestic market.
“To gain a competitive advantage, Sam reviewed opportunities of interest including the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat transfer and mass transport capability of the assembled harvester,” Mr Soper said.
“This work will be used for solving problems of future engineering and mathematical models.”
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