RIT - Department of Mechanical Engineering | People | Faculty

Elizabeth DeBartolo Elizabeth DeBartolo

Assistant Professor
Phone: 585-475-2152
E-mail: eademe@rit.edu
Office: 2051 Gleason

Biography:
Elizabeth DeBartolo is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at RIT. She received her BSE in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 1994 and her MS and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1996 and 2000, respectively. While at Purdue, Dr. DeBartolo was a teaching assistant in junior- and senior-level machine design courses, as well as a full course instructor in Dynamics. Since joining the faculty at RIT, she has taught Statics, Materials Science, Design of Machine Elements, and Advanced Mechanics of Solids, as well as piloting an Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design course for 1st year ME students and a dual undergraduate/graduate course on the Fundamentals of Fatigue and Fracture.

Dr. DeBartolo's background is in fatigue life prediction and microstructure effects on mechanical behavior of aluminum alloys. Her graduate work involved development of fatigue life prediction methodologies based on statistically quantifiable material characteristics for aluminum aircraft components. This work, sponsored by AFOSR, was part of a larger interdisciplinary project to control, quantify, and repair materials degradation in aircraft structures. In addition to her thesis work, Dr. DeBartolo was fortunate enough to work on several consulting projects under the supervision of her advisor. These included failure analysis, finite element analysis, microscopy, and x-ray analysis on steels and various polymeric materials for several companies involved in litigation or potential litigation, as well as design and fatigue life prediction for a local manufacturing company. At RIT, Dr. DeBartolo has been continuing her work with fatigue life prediction in aircraft engine components and structural members and has begun investigating static and fatigue strength in diffusion-bonded alloys. She is also working with ME students on two projects for military vehicle life enhancement through RIT's National Center for Remanufacturing and Resource Recovery.

In the future, Dr. DeBartolo would like to pursue her fatigue life prediction work with specific applications to aircraft structural materials and engine materials. In addition, this fatigue work and the statistical life prediction approaches involved would be valuable for the auto, power generation, and medical device industries, or any other industry where probability of failure due to fatigue loading is an issue in reliability analysis. In the classroom, Dr. DeBartolo is beginning to involve students in the practical aspects of design and failure analysis in the 2nd year Materials Science course. She will always be happy to take any failed components you may have to offer for use as class projects involving metallurgical analysis, stress analysis, and various strength and hardness tests.