Seminar on: LASER MACHINING APPLICATIONS
The IET-KFUPM Student Chapter was honoured to have one of the Distinguished Professors (Dr. Bekir Sami Yilbas, ME Dept.) of the esteemed King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) delivering a seminar on “Laser Machining Applications”.
The seminar was held on Tuesday, 26th April 2011, and its continued session on Tuesday, 3rd May 2011 in Bldg.24, Auditorium # 120 during the lunch break from 12:20pm to 1:00pm.
Event Highlights:
The seminar was unfolded with the Secretary of IET-KFUPM Student Chapter, Omair M. Siddiqui, introducing to the audience this great personality who was amongst us then – Dr. Bekir Sami Yilbas.
The audience which comprised mostly of engineering students were firstly introduced to the concept of laser machining and showed how laser machining offers considerable advantages over the conventional machining processes. This, as he puts it, is due to the precision of operation, local treatment, and non-mechanical contact between the substrate material and the laser beam. During the seminar, Dr. Yilbas presented the products of laser drilling and cutting processes along with their enlarged nanoscale images . He also mentioned some of the case studies in relation to laser drilling and cutting, for example, the laser drilling of Inconel 625 and laser cutting of steel.
The speaker then entertained an in-depth Q&A session by the audience where he also inspired them by sharing his experiences of being a researcher, and upon a question by one of the attendees, he shared the story behind his motivation of continuously researching and discovering which he says keeps on making him dive deeper “to find answers”. Even after years of research and more than a 500 publications, he says “We can do a lot more… There’s so much more to find”.
As a token of appreciation and to recognise Dr. Bekir Yilbas’s time and effort towards the IET-KFUPM Student Chapter, Abdul Jabbar Siddiqui (President) extended the vote of thanks towards him and awarded Dr. Yilbas with a ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ on behalf of the IET Saudi Arabia Network. [Photo by Ahmed Sini]
About the Speaker
Dr. Bekir Sami Yilbas obtained his PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Birmingham University in UK in 1982. He worked at Birmingham, Glasgow, and Erciyes Universities before joining to KFUPM. He is currentlya distinguished professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. His research area covers thermo-fluid, in particular, thermoelectric, laser machining applications, and surface engineering. He published over 470 papers in international journals and presented 85 papers in conferences. He served and serving editorial board member of seven international journals. He received many awards over the years due to his scientific achievements. Some of these include:
- President of India’s Prize for 1988 due to his contribution to the high power laser design for space applications,
- The best researcher awards from KFUPM (1997, 2002, 2007),
- Silver Jubilee Medal for the outstanding achievements in Materials and Manufacturing 2005 by Silesian University of Technology, Poland,
- Doctor of Engineering Degree from Birmingham University (2005) due to the contribution of originality and merit to his field of study, and a sustained, consistent and substantial contribution to the advancement of knowledge over a number of years, and authoritative standing in their field of study, and seminal publications which have led to extensions or development of knowledge by others,
- Donald Julius Groen Prize for 2007 from Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Manufacturing Industries Division, UK due to his work for the new developments on laser shock processing
- Professor W. Johson International Gold Medal for 2008 by awarded by the Advances in Materials and Processing Technologies Steering Committee due to his substantial contribution to the Laser Material Processing.
