Writer: Linda Fresques, 575-646-7416, lfresque@nmsu.edu

Ehsan Dehghan-Niri, NMSU civil engineering assistant professor, received a 2020 fellowship from the American Society for Non-Destructive Testing. (NMSU photo by Vladimir Avina)

New Mexico State University Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Ehsan Dehghan-Niri and Ph.D. candidate Sina Zamen received a 2020 fellowship from the American Society for Non-Destructive Testing. The fellowship award was based on their proposal, “Evaluation of Rolling Contact Fatigue cracks on railheads using nonlinear ultrasound in phase-space domain.”

The primary goal of this research proposal is to use a revolutionizing approach in ultrasound testing in detection and characterization of certain types of fatigue cracks in steel railheads that can cause abrupt and catastrophic failure. Ultrasonic testing has become the most widely used railroad inspection technique. The new method of ultrasonic testing to be investigated by Dehghan-Niri and Zamen holds promise to overcome the issues of conventional ultrasonic testing systems.

The outcomes may fundamentally revolutionize the way ultrasound testing is performed in many different industrial and medical applications.

The ASNT Fellowship Award provides a $20,000 cash award, for “high-quality research activities in science and technology at the graduate level.” The majority of the award will support Zamen.

Zamen, a graduate assistant in the Civil Engineering Department, also received a $4,000 merit-based fellowship from the NMSU Graduate School for the 2020-2021 academic year. 

Sina Zamen, a civil engineering Ph.D. candidate at NMSU, received a 2020 fellowship from the American Society for Non-Destructive Testing.

The American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc. is the world’s largest technical society for nondestructive testing professionals. ASNT promotes the discipline of NDT as a profession and facilitates NDT research and technology applications.