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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

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.

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