BYU professor A. Brent Strong will receive a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the engineering fields of materials and processes.

Strong, professor of manufacturing engineering and engineering technology, will receive the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering Fellow Award May 15 in Long Beach, Calif.

John Green, president of Green Sales Guy, Inc., said the Fellow Award is the "Pulitzer Prize" of the organization.

Val Hawks, BYU associate professor of Manufacturing School of Technology, attributes Strong's success to his love of learning and sharing his knowledge with everyone.

As a teacher, he is able to break down a complicated process to the student level.

Green characterizes Strong as a caring and helpful human being, worthy of the Fellow Award.

One important contribution Strong has made to the state of Utah and to the future of manufacturing plastics and materials was the founding of the Advanced Composites Manufacturing and Engineering Center here at BYU.

Strong said 15 years ago, manufacturing companies were not sophisticated, especially small companies, but with the development of the center, companies could get the necessary help, whether it was testing, process improvements, or developing new materials.

Strong noted Utah had the potential to develop in the composite and plastic industry. Around the same time, two competing companies in the manufacturing of rockets, Hercules in Magna and Thiokol in Brigham City, used steel cylinders as the rocket motor case.

Strong said, "If you can make it lighter, its better."

It costs $10,000 per pound to send something into space. Plastic weighs nine times less than steel. The new rockets still weighed thousands of pounds, but are still more cost efficient than steel cases.

Green said Strong "has great credentials, assists in the industry (composites manufacturing and engineering), and makes improvements to the industry."

Another contribution is Strong's patent for the development of resin cure sensor technology, which cures the composite to the correct durability for the finished manufactured product.

A composite is the combination of resin, unformed plastic, and carbon fibers, form a composite.

Strong explained the sensor technology not only maximizes the properties of composites, but also senses the mobility of molecules.

He said if you have a single pipe running from Texas to Utah that transfers gasoline, jet fuel, oil and kerosene, and empties into the same container, you spend more money separating the different liquids. Since molecules of different liquids move at different speeds, the sensor technology can identify what fuel is running through the pipe and separate into different containers.

Green said Strong's patents have improved processing and the end product in composites and plastics and is "environmentally friendly and is the wave of the future."

Copyright Brigham Young University 13 May 2002