Dr. Haibo Ma Started His Career at SSAB Americas

Congratulations to Dr. Haibo Ma, who joined the SSAB Americas as a Research Engineer – Casting on March 1, 2022. CIVS hosted a celebratory party for Dr. Ma on February 25 to congratulate him, all CIVS students and staff attended the party and sent their best wishes to Haibo.

Haibo Ma, CIVS Research Associate, received a Doctoral Degree in Mechanical Engineering with a thesis titled “On Heat Transfer Mechanisms in Secondary Cooling of Continuous Casting of Steel Slab” from Purdue University West Lafayette in August 2021. He worked on two of the consortium projects, primary & secondary cooling in continuous casting, from 2017 to 2021 at CIVS. He developed several state-of-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models for simulating the continuous casting process. His numerical study has provided knowledge and understanding of the heat transfer phenomena in continuous casting, which could result in significant cost savings such as energy consumption in terms of reduced slab rejections in the steel industry.

Furthermore, he also developed a simulator to predict heat transfer coefficient (HTC) in real-time for dynamic spray control. Haibo continued to work at CIVS as a Research Associate after graduation and worked on the dynamic solidification prediction simulator project in partnership with SSAB Americas. The project aims to develop a comprehensive simulator to predict HTC, solidification, and stress in continuous casting in real-time. Haibo and his team will complete phase 1 of the project by the end of February 2022. When Haibo starts his new position at SSAB, he will collaborate with CIVS and continue to develop the rest of the project.

SSAB is a highly-specialized global steel company. The company is a leading producer on the global market for Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) and Quenched & Tempered Steels (Q&T), strip, plate, and tubular products, as well as construction solutions. SSAB is also one of the founding members of the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC).

Haibo said that he really appreciated the time he spent at CIVS under the mentorship of Professor Chenn Zhou and Professor Armin Silaen. He also expressed special thanks to all the present and past member companies and the project technical committee members of SMSVC. Their instructions and guidance have helped him gain knowledge that will assist him in his future endeavors.