Aishwarya Sriraman, a doctoral student with Iowa State University‘s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, recently received the Best Presentation Award in the Doctoral Symposium associated with the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) Conference 2018 held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The conference, which took place Sept. 24-27, 2018, brought together the global community of PHM experts from industry, academia and government in diverse application areas, including energy, aerospace, transportation, automotive, manufacturing and industrial automation.
Sriraman’s presentation was titled “Development of Aging Models for Lifetime Prediction of Thermally Aged Industrial-Grade Cable Insulation Polymers.” Her research, which she conducts with MSE’s Professor Nicola Bowler, looks at cable insulation rubber.
“I work in the Electromagnetic Materials Design and Characterization research group, and my Ph.D. dissertation work primarily focuses on the characterization and lifetime prediction of thermally aged industrial-grade ethylene propylene rubber, a commonly employed cable insulation material for application in nuclear power plants,” Sriraman said. “I study various techniques that can be used to track property changes in the polymeric rubber as a function of degradation due to thermal aging. Using the characterization data I collect, I will develop prognostic aging models based on different approaches that track different fundamental property changes with aging, in order to predict the remaining useful life of the polymer.”
Bowler said, “I was delighted when Aishwarya was selected as a fully supported participant in the PHM Society’s doctoral symposium 2018. I and my research group members helped Aishwarya prepare, and, on the day, she made a wonderful presentation and received valuable feedback from the expert panel on her proposed research directions.”
While Sriraman is grateful for the award, she gained other positive benefits as well.
“The PHM 2018 conference was really informative and a wonderful experience,” Sriraman said. “I’ve had the opportunity to network with a lot of scientists, both in the academic as well as industrial sectors, and it has been a really good learning experience. The award was indeed a pleasant surprise. I got some wonderful feedback from the panelists about my research.”