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Metal peeling refers to the process of forming a thin metal strip from the surface of a rotating feedstock using controlled material removal -- machining under an applied strip tension. In this paper, the mechanics of strip formation process is described, while emphasizing the role of strip tension in ensuring uniformity and quality of the peeled strip. This includes an analysis of the deformation history in the peeling zone and the transport dynamics of the strip as it moves from the cutting edge to the coiler. Using conservation laws, governing equations for strip tension and velocity that incorporate dynamic spatiotemporal interactions between peeling and transport processes are developed. The mechanics of strip formation process is described, while emphasizing the role of strip tension in ensuring uniformity and quality of the peeled strip. This includes an analysis of the deformation history in the peeling zone and the transport dynamics of the strip as it moves from the cutting edge to the coiler. Using conservation laws, governing equations for strip tension and velocity that incorporate dynamic spatiotemporal interactions between peeling and transport processes are developed. Peeling experiments are performed with steel using a prototype experimental platform to evaluate the proposed control approach. Comparisons between two control strategies, with and without tension feedback, are presented and discussed. The importance of real-time tension control for mitigating strip thickness variations and improving other dimensional features of the strip such as flatness and edge waviness is also briefly discussed. 

Advancements in information technology and computational intelligence have transformed the manufacturing landscape, allowing firms to produce highly complex and customized product in a relatively short amount of time. However, our research shows that the lack of a skilled workforce remains a challenge in the manufacturing industry. To that end, providing research experience to undergraduates has been widely reported as a very effective approach to attract students to industry or graduate education in engineering and other STEM-based majors. This paper presents assessment results of two cohorts of Cybermanufacturing REU at a major university. Students were recruited from across the United States majoring in multiple engineering fields, such as industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, mechatronics, manufacturing, and computer science. Several of the participants were rising sophomores or juniors who did not have any industry internship or prior research experience. In total 20 students (ten per year) participated in the program and worked on individual project topics under the guidance of faculty and graduate student mentors. Unlike a typical REU program, the Cybermanufacturing REU involved a few unique activities, such as a 48-hour intense design and prototype build experience (also known as Aggies Invent), industry seminars, and industry visits. Overall, the REU students demonstrated significant gains in all of the twelve research-related competencies that were assessed as a part of formative and summative evaluation process. While almost all of them wanted to pursue a career in advanced manufacturing, including Cybermanufacturing, the majority of the participants preferred industry over graduate school. The paper provides an in-depth discussion on the findings of the REU program evaluation and its impact on undergraduate students with respect to their future plans and career choice. The analysis is also done by gender, ethnicity, academic level (sophomore, junior, senior), and type of home institution (e.g., large research universities, rural and small schools) to explore if there was any significant difference in mean research competency scores based on these attributes. 

In this paper we derive spatially dependent transfer functions for web span lateral dynamics which provide web lateral position and slope as outputs at any location in the span; the inputs are guide roller displacement, web lateral position disturbances from upstream spans, and disturbances due to misaligned rollers. This is in sharp contrast to the existing approach where only web lateral position response is available on the rollers. We describe the inherent drawbacks of the existing approach and how the new approach overcomes them. The new approach relies on taking the 1D Laplace transform with respect to the temporal variable of both the web governing equation and the boundary conditions. One can also obtain the web slope at any location within the web span with the proposed approach. A general span lateral transfer function, which is an explicit function of the spatial position along the span, is obtained first followed by its application to different intermediate guide configurations.