AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS Minutes Mechanisms Committee September 14, 1998

Members Present: J. Beard, K. Kazerounian, M. McCarthy K. Farhang, D. Kholi, J. Mirth B. Freeman, H. Lipkin, C. Wampler C. Gosselin, G. Lovell, R. Williams Guests: 37 CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chairman McCarthy at 6:35 P. M. EST.

OLD BUSINESS 1998 Design Engineering Technical Conferences A. Individuals Recognized M. McCarthy recognized the following individuals for their contributions to the conference and to the Mechanisms Committee: H. Lipkin and L. Tsai, the chairs of the DETC and Mechanisms Conference respectively; C. Gosselin, the DETC Technical Program Chair; K. Farhang, J. Mirth, R. Williams, R. Freeman, J. Beard, S. Song, and K. Kazerounian, the subcommittee chairs responsible for coordinating the review of papers in their respective topic areas; and Suresh Ananthasuresh, S. V. Sreenivasan , Jeff Ge, J. Rastegar, and S. Derby, who organized special sessions. B. Report by the DETC Chair H. Lipkin said that the planning and organizing for the conference went relatively smoothly since more people were involved than at previous conferences. He said that the restructuring of the Mechanisms Committee has helped both to involve more people and to better distribute the workload. Lipkin mentioned that a concerted effort was placed on

getting exhibitors and that targeting book publishers and CAE companies yielded good results. He said that more people came than expected for the Saturday night prior to the conference and that increasing the number of reserved rooms for Saturday should be considered for future conferences. There were at least 409 registrants for the conference. C. 2000 DETC L. Tsai said that the 2000 DETC will be held in Baltimore at the Omni hotel. The Omni is at the Baltimore Inner Harbor, which has many attractions and restaurants. The Baltimore-Washington area is served by three major airports and the conference hotel is approximately a twenty minute drive from Baltimore-Washington Airport. Tsai said that a local conference committee has already been formed. D. 2002 DETC K. Kazerounian said that the conference will likely be in Newport and that Hartford is a fallback. He mentioned that there are at least three large hotels in Newport and that there is a lot of industry in the area. There is easy access to major airports and many recreational opportunities. E. Report by the DETC Technical Program Chair C. Gosselin mentioned that of the 220 papers received, 191 are in the conference program. He mentioned that the new review process saved him a lot of effort. In this new process, papers are sent directly review coordinators, who then enter the papers directly into the database. Gosselin said that the only drawback was that some people forgot to send him copies of the papers, which he needed for assessing the best paper award. He also mentioned that the papers load for some of the review coordinators was a little high. M. McCarthy asked for comments and criticisms on the paper review process. J. Beard mentioned that it was a somewhat difficult to get the reviews in the right format and Gosselin said many of the reviews he received were not in the right format. It was agreed that more work is necessary for establishing an effective method for entering paper information into the database. McCarthy stressed that it is best to enter paper information as soon as the paper is received. F. Review of the CD-ROM Proceedings Philip Devietro, who heads ASME Publications, reviewed the process of creating the CDROM proceedings. The files (for papers) received were of the following formats: 80% were Windows, 13% were Macintosh, and 7% were UNIX. About 10% of the papers had to be scanned in because the files were unreadable. About 50% of the paper were Word files and 30% were PDF. Other text/word processing formats used included Word Perfect, Post Script, and LATEX. Nearly a quarter of the papers were sent via ftp and 3% were sent via the Web. Three of the files had viruses. Only about one half of the CDROM’s capacity was used.

There were several complaints about not being able to read papers at the conference. Devietro said that ASME is looking into getting papers on the Web and that they might be able to do this within the next two years. There was a suggestion to mail CD-ROMs to conference registrants. Devietro mentioned that there are several problems with a CDROM mailing: (I) shipping costs, (II) many conference attendees register just prior to the conference, and (III) deadlines get pushed up. There was general agreement that putting papers on the Web would be a good solution. Devietro suggested that an interim solution is to post papers in a room at the conference site. McCarthy mentioned some important advantages of CD-ROM proceedings over paper proceedings: (I) conference attendees get all the papers from all the conferences without having a stack of proceedings volumes and (II) authors can put more information (i.e., text and graphics) in their papers. Devietro mentioned that most libraries still want paper proceedings and ASME might produce both CD-ROM and paper proceedings should the cost of CD-ROM production come down enough. Devietro said that ASME is working at making a joint database that both publications and meetings groups can use.

NEW BUSINESS Report by DED Representative Dan Segalman stressed the importance of maintaining lines of communication between the DED technical committees and the DED executive committee. He said that each technical committee is expected to communicate to the DD twice a year, which can take the form of a one page report. He said that anything that is considered important to a technical committee should be presented to the executive committee. Segalman mentioned that the DED is underrepresented in fellows and that Mechanism Committee members should strive to nominate those they feel are worthy of the fellow grade. Elections to the Mechanisms Committee The following nominations were taken from the floor: Mohan Bodduluri Steve Derby Anoop Dhingra Larry Howell Sridar Kota Sundar Krishnamurty

Keith Nisbett Jahan Rastegar Pradip Sheth S. V. Sreenivasan Mike Stanisic L. Tsai After the election, the Mechanisms Committee members are as follows: Terms ending in 2004

Terms ending in 2002

Terms ending in 2000

L. Howell S. Kota J. Rastegar M. Stanisic L. Tsai

K. Farhang C. Gosselin H. Lipkin J. Mirth C. Wampler

J. Beard K. Kazerounian M. McCarthy S. Song R. Williams

McCarthy recognized the following committee members whose terms expire this year for their contributions to the committee: J. Angelos, E. Fichter, R. Freeman, D. Kholi, and G. Lovell. Next Committee Meeting The next committee meeting will be held in April, 1999.

ADJOURNMENT M. McCarthy adjourned the meeting at 8:00 P. M.

Respectfully submitted, G. Lovell, Secretary