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#399 – An Interview with Steve Kreuzer

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Welcome Dr Steven Kreuzer!

Before we start, we were asked to mention: “The opinions and views expressed in this episode are those of Steve Kreuzer and do not in any way reflect the opinions and values of Exponent”

  • Background
    • Steve and Chris went to high school together, Case Western Reserve together, ended up as roommates together in Austin and now work in similar industries.
      • 0h 1m 23s
    • He got introduced to biomech via a program at Duke which later lead to grad school at UT Austin.
      • 0h 2m 22s
    • He work at the (now former) GE appliance division (they were sold to Haier in 2016)
      • 0h 3m 49s
    • At UT Austin,  he worked on the effects of acceleration on cells.
      • 0h 5m 6s
    • This included understand how proteins unfold.
      • 0h 7m 17s
    • PhD program
      • 0h 8m 32s
    • Difficulty of funding sources
      • 0h 8m 39s
    • Salary of PhD
      • 0h 9m 50s
    • Lots of simulation work
      • 0h 12m 14s
    • Pharma seemed like the right path
      • 0h 12m 20s
  • Exponenet
    • Ended up at Exponent, wanting to get a hand back into industry.
      • 0h 12m 44s
    • Lots of people who work there are interdisciplinary
      • 0h 12m 52s
    • Ended up in Menlo Park doing mechanical engineering work for them.
      • 0h 13m 40s
    • This included lots of CFD and FEA (links below)
      • 0h 13m 55s
    • Started working on Consumer Electronics devices
      • 0h 14m 15s
    • Steve explained the types of companies that call Exponent
      • 0h 17m 12s
    • Size of companies that call vary, but large companies all the way down to startups.
      • 0h 18m 15s
    • Exponent deals with more specified problems rather than generics. They don’t do design work, it’s more working with existing, unique problems.
      • 0h 20m 13s
    • One example is companies dealing with recalls.
      • 0h 22m 10s
    • Consulted on the Samsung Galaxy battery fires.
      • 0h 22m 44s
    • They helped identifying the problem.
      • 0h 23m 47s
    • Could it have been caught by simulation?
      • 0h 26m 15s
    • A big piece of prevention is reliability audits.
      • 0h 26m 25s
    • Another large piece is understanding if things will go wrong by doing accelerated testing, which includes temperature cycling.
      • 0h 28m 10s
  • Working with Lithium Ion (and other types of batteries)
    • Steve recommends to always use Battery management units
      • 0h 30m 12s
    • Want to protect the cell from the environment
      • 0h 30m 52s
    • 18650 packs
      • 0h 31m 51s
    • Forces on the batteries
      • 0h 33m 47s
    • Protecting environment from the cell
      • 0h 34m 31s
    • Failing well
      • 0h 35m 0s
    • Simulating thermal runaway of batteries
      • 0h 36m 10s
    • Color maps of stresses using programs like Abaqus
      • 0h 38m 43s
    • Ties into Solidworks
      • 0h 38m 57s
    • Finite Element Analysis
      • 0h 39m 15s
    • Testing allows you to assign material properties
      • 0h 41m 37s
    • Test at their labs/facilities under a hood
      • 0h 43m 20s
    • “Exponents model is that we shouldn’t do anything that’s standardized”
      • 0h 44m 0s
    • Design an experiment where you recreate the worst case scenario
      • 0h 46m 1s
    • MatWeb
      • 0h 47m 1s
    • Reactive vs Proactive
      • 0h 51m 23s
    • Decision to call Exponent is often based on internal reliability testing
      • 0h 52m 22s
  • BGAs and working with boards in consumer products
    • Failures in thermal cycles
      • 0h 54m 32s
    • Arrhenius Equation
      • 0h 55m 12s
    • Computational Fluid Dynamics
      • 0h 55m 23s
    • Was listening to episode with Dave about BGAs
      • 0h 55m 53s
    • Have looked at the reflow process
      • 0h 57m 11s
    • Viscoelasticity
      • 0h 57m 24s
    • Thermal stresses plus drop scenario
      • 0h 59m 24s
    • Simulating drops of PCBs inside enclosures
      • 1h 1m 9s
    • How easily a die is getting rid of heat
      • 1h 4m 36s
    • Human factors aspect of devices
      • 1h 6m 3s
    • Sony laptop that was burning “laps”
      • 1h 6m 52s
    • Lithium ion batteries getting thinner
      • 1h 9m 8s
    • What is the output of CFD research? Suggestions around changes to airflow or design.
      • 1h 11m 29s
    • Not as much publishing in their industry, because of
      • 1h 13m 19s
    • Publishing usually happens around educating the public in a field
      • 1h 13m 32s
  • Contact

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Comments

  1. There was a great Stem Talk episode with Keith Baar where he talks about engineering muscles,tendons and ligaments in the lab (It’s in Part 1 49m29s)

    I’d also recommend Episode 24 and 31 of the After-On podcast, where they talk about the incredible work that’s being done to synthesize proteins.

  3. Bombastic.

    I realize that a significant percentage of your audience doesn’t understand standard engineering practices which large companies and consulting companies like Exponent do, but the posturing and pretentious word usage PhDs love to use made it difficult to listen to.

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