Albert V. Karvelis, Ph.D., P.E.

Dr. Karvelis's practice area for 40 years has been machinery and manufacturing. This includes all aspects of machinery, from R&D and intellectual property through design, manufacturing, safety/risk assessment, test, failure analysis, and performance assessment. His specialties include mechanical power transmission, machine design, vibration and acoustics; failure analysis of machinery; fluid dynamics and fluid machinery.

Dr. Karvelis has been employed as an Engineer, Engineering Manager and Vice President , and Consultant in a wide variety of industries, including HVAC (Trane Company), nuclear and fossil power (Babcock & Wilcox), aerospace (US Navy), automotive components, petrochemicals, and materials processing (Borg Warner). He has participated or led design teams in the design/test/analysis of products such as valves, pumps (Byron Jackson & Centralift), fans/compressors (TLT Babcock), power transmission systems and components (Borg Warner Corporation, Borg Warner Chemicals, Morse Chain, Wells Fargo & York International), automated assembly/fabrication machinery, medical devices, sensors, and consumer products. While at Packer Engineering, he served as head of the Machinery and Manufacturing consulting division and led the Intellectual Property practice area.

For over 20 years, Dr. Karvelis has been active in and held leadership positions within the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in the Design Engineering Division and the Codes & Standards Division. In 1996, he was Chair of the ASME 8th International Power Transmission and Gearing Conference and co-editor of the Proceedings. He has also been elected to serve on the ANSI Standards drafting committees of The Association of Manufacturing Technology. As Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering, he has taught graduate courses in fatigue, fracture mechanics, and vibration, and has lectured on ethics and safety in design for over 15 years. Dr. Karvelis also co-authored a chapter on ergonomics and workplace in the recently published McGraw-Hill Manufacturing Engineering Handbook.

Dr. Karvelis was elected to the rank of ASME Fellow in 2008. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Fellow Grade is recognition of significant engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession.

Dr. Karvelis has testified in State and Federal Courts as a mechanical engineering expert in matters involving intellectual property and machine design and performance issues, and has served as a court-appointed neutral party in binding arbitration of complex machinery performance.

Karvelis A (ed). Proceedings, 7th International Power Transmission and Gearing Conference, 1996.

Karvelis A. A contextual analysis of the effectiveness of backup alarms. Proceedings, 14th International System Safety, August 12–17, 1996.

Karvelis A. Self-locking worm gears: Fact or fiction? Power Transmission Design, March 1996.

Karvelis A. Computer aided 3-D surface reconstruction during high speed crush events. SAE Special Publication SP-851, Technical Paper No. 910320, February 1991.

Karvelis A, Liubinskas A, Anderson C. 3-D coordinate reconstruction of high speed mechanically dynamic experiments. Presented at Image Acquisition & 10 Image Processing of Optical Engineering Midwest Conference, September 27–28, 1990.

Karvelis A (ed). Advanced topics in vibration. In: ASME Publication DE-Vol. 8, 1988.

Karvelis A. A systems approach to reducing gear rattle. SAE Technical Paper 870396, presented at SAE Congress, February 1987.

Karvelis A, Lapple W. Fluid dynamic forces in an atmospheric fluidized bed combustor. Proceedings, Fluid Mechanics of Combustion Systems, ASME, June 1981.

Karvelis A, Minoofar D. Practical considerations in noise testing of quiet valves. Proceedings, INTERNOISE-80 December 1980.

Karvelis A, Reethof G. A cross-correlation technique for investigating internal flow noise. Proceedings, ASME Noise & Fluids Engineering, November 1977.

Karvelis A, Reethof G. Valve Noise research using internal wall pressure fluctuations. Proceedings, INTERNOISE-74, 1974.

Karvelis A, Reethof G. Internal wall pressure field studies downstream from orificial-type valves. Instrument Society of America, Paper 74-827, 1974.

Book Chapters

Curry DG, Karvelis AV. Ergonomics. Chapter 58, pp. 58.1–58.40. In: Manufacturing Engineering Handbook. Geng H (ed), New York: McGraw-Hill, June 2004.

Reports

Karvelis A, Campbell K. Pressure delivery device for Meniere's disease. Report to Public Health Service, National Institute of Health, National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, November 9, 1993.

Karvelis A, Raj D, et al. Acoustic monitoring of nuclear safety and relief valves. EPRI Final Report No. 3332, December 1983.

Olszewski JS, Anthony JM. Development of sensors and instrumentation for the TMI-2 OTSG Tube Vibration Measurements program. NP-1875 EPRI Research Project S140-1, June 1981.

• Senior Vice President, Packer Engineering, 2001–2008
• Vice President, Packer Engineering, 1989–2001
• Manager Engineering Mechanics, Borg Warner Corporation, 1982–1989
• Senior Research Engineer, Babcock & Wilcox Research Center, Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, 1977–1982
• Research Engineer, The Trane Company, 1975–1977
• Executive Officer-USNR_R, Intellectual Property Auditor, Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research Reserve Unit 4-4, 1971–1975
• Various Positions, U.S. Navy, Naval Air Systems Command, including tour as Senior Project Officer at Headquarters, Propulsion Division, 1967–1970, and student naval aviator
  

(Sample Projects as Principal Investigator/Manager)

Design, test, and installation of electromechanical mechanisms and sensors in: Mach 8 wind tunnel, nuclear reactor steam generator. Directed development of laser Doppler enabled in-situ fluid flow measurement technology in automotive torque converters. Led the design and development of a commercial high-speed die-cut and foil-transfer machine for paper-converting application.

Directed or participated in independent mechanical design reviews and/or safety reviews of: cookware, valves power boiler, hospital lifts, home elevators, aluminum ingot portable plant (casting and machining), steel fabrication equipment, Mars Lander deployer mechanism, automated remote maintenance systems, electric motor bearings, road milling machines, infant walkers, crop converter, and others.

Design of test facilities and execution of valve testing ranging from 1 cc/min gas flow simulation in silicon chip manufacturing to 1 million lbs /hour steam blowdown testing for nuclear PRV valves for post-Three Mile Island evaluations. Other testing has included accelerated life testing for high temperature liquid control valves.

Principal Investigator on a National Institutes of Health SBIR development of a portable pressure devices for alleviating the symptoms of Menier’s Disease. Also performed independent mechanical and electrical design review for open MRI production version prior to commercial release. Developed reduction-to-practice process for infant heart-lung equipment and key design improvements for a miniaturized portable oxygen concentrator for patients.

Failure analysis/recall investigations: milling machines, hydraulic mobile cranes, compressors 2-5000HP, HVAC fire/smoke dampers, high-temperature valves, infant walkers, windmill gearboxes, truck and boat transmissions, crankshafts, and cookware.

Patent/trade secret projects: design around patented technology for rail car components, reduction to practice for medical devices, infringement analysis; validity analysis for paper converting machinery, valves, and gas delivery systems, including trial testimony. Trained by the Office of Naval Research in 1970, later served on the Corporate Patent Committee at Borg Warner Corporation.

Led the design/NRC qualification /build and install of vibration sensors for nuclear steam generator monitoring at Duke Power and GPU (Three Mile Island II). At Oconee Unit II, the team installed the sensors during a fuel outage in a radioactive environment requiring special safety procedures and equipment.

Appointed by the Wisconsin court to serve as the neutral member in a three person panel of experts in a mandatory arbitration involving an automated welding assembly line machine for car/truck frames. The dispute dealt not only with contract performance issues but also design and manufacturing practices.

Responsible for directing multi-disciplinary teams of OEM (GM, Ford, Chrysler, Subaru) in solving driveline problems associated with clutches and transmissions interacting with vehicle suspension. The transmission component design group, while under his supervision, was responsible for over 51 patent disclosure submittals filed with the USPTO. Improvements to manual transmissions, continuously variable and automatic transmissions as torque converter design were the focus of many of the patents.

In recognition for his contributions and expertise in machinery design and also in machine safety, Dr. Karvelis was appointed/elected by ASME to serve on both the ANSI/ASME B15.1 Safety Standard – Power Transmission committee and the ASME Design Engineering Division Technical Committee on Power Transmission and Gearing, as well as the ASME Design Engineering Division Design Education Committee. The Association for Manufacturing Technology has also recognized his contributions and expertise and appointed him Chair of the ANSI/AMT Safety Standard- B11.10 Metal Saws.

• ASME Design Engineering Division – Design Engineering Education Committee – Treasurer, Reviewer Peer Review Journal Articles, 2008
• ASME Power Transmission & Gearing Technical Committee, Member 1985–present; Chairman 1992–1996
• Western Society of Engineers (WSE) Board of Directors, Trustee, 2004–2008