Press Release MEDIA CONTACT Engineering Systems Inc. 4215 Campus Drive Aurora, IL 60504 Phone: (866) 596‐3994 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ESI CONSULTANTS HONORED WITH DR. MYER EZRIN ‘BEST PAPER’ AWARD AT 2015 SPE TECHNICAL (ANTEC) CONFERENCE AURORA, IL – March 31, 2015. ESI is pleased to announce that a paper written by ESI consultants Dr. Michael D. Hayes, P.E., Dr. Michael E. Stevenson, P.E., and Dustin A. Turnquist, P.E. was recently honored with the Dr. Myer Ezrin ‘Best Paper’ Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)’s Failure Analysis and Prevention Special Interest Group (FAPSIG) at the SPE 2015 Technical Conference (ANTEC) in Orlando, Florida. The award was based both on a technical peer review of the paper, and Dr. Hayes’ presentation of the paper at the conference. In the paper, titled ‘Failure Analysis of a Glass Filled Phenolic Resin Power Steering Pump Pulley,’ the authors detail an investigation led by Dr. Stevenson involving a glass filled phenolic resin power steering pump pulley implicated in an automobile accident. The investigation included vehicle inspection, macroscopic and microscopic examination, stress analysis, exemplar testing, and a root cause failure analysis performed to test two competing hypotheses introduced to explain the failure. ‐ The first hypothesis suggested that the failure was a result of the impact of the pulley with other under‐the‐hood components during the rear end collision. ‐ The second hypothesis attributed the fracture to fatigue, which was alleged to be the result of various defects. The paper and presentation detailed the various steps used in the investigation, and identified the root cause as impact during the rear‐end collision. No defects or evidence of fatigue were found on the pulley. The paper has been accepted for publication by the Society of Plastics Engineers, and will also be republished in Plastics Engineering. ESI is a full‐service engineering, scientific, and technical consulting firm with an extensive, national network of qualified professionals in almost every technical discipline. Consultants in ESI’s Polymers and Composites practice have decades of combined technical expertise and experience analyzing and investigating failures involving polymer and composite materials, and their technical analysis capabilities includes finite element analyses, fatigue and fracture mechanics, dispersion modeling, and solid modeling. For more information about the paper or presentation, please contact Dr. Hayes in ESI’s Atlanta, Georgia office at mdhayes@esi‐atl.com. CALIFORNIA - COLORADO - FLORIDA - GEORGIA - ILLINOIS – IOWA - MICHIGAN - MISSOURI - NEBRASKA - NORTH CAROLINA - TEXAS