Researchers receive Harting Award

Professor Luis Dorfmann of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering was part of a team of Tufts researchers that received the 2018 Harting Award, which is awarded annually for the best paper published in Experimental Techniques in a given year. In this case, the award is for the best paper of 2016.

The paper was selected by the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) Honors Committee from among a group of outstanding nominated papers. The SEM recognized the paper for its quality and the thoroughness of its approach.

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) are degenerative dilations of the abdominal aorta that can threaten a patient's life if they rupture. In the U.S. alone, 14,000 people per year die of a ruptured AAA. Most patients with unruptured AAAs have comorbid conditions and are poor candidates for surgery, so medical professionals must carefully assess individual patients' risk of rupture, to avoid unnecessary, high-risk surgery. Computational models of wall stress development are utilized. This paper—titled "A Technique for Comparing Wall Pressure Distributions in Steady Flow Through Rigid Vs. Flexible Patient-based Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Phantoms"—described a method for measuring the wall pressure distribution in phantoms that replicated AAA geometry.

The authors were Robert Peattie of Tufts Medical Center; E. Golden of the Department of Biomedical Engineering; Rio Nomoto of Tufts Medical Center; Christa Margossian, EG13 (Biomedical Engineering); Francesco Pancheri, EG13 (Mechanical Engineering); E.S. Edgar of Abt Associates; Mark Iafrati of Tufts Medical Center; and Dorfmann.