U.S.-Germany Program: Dissertation Research in Mechanical Engineering

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This award supports Eric Flint, a graduate student of Professor Craig A. Rogers in the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, to spend five months carrying out research at the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) in Braunschweig, Germany. His host for this period of dissertation-related research is Jorg Melcher, Deputy Head of the Division of Adaptive Structural Systems of the Institute of Structural Mechanics of DLR. This Institute is possibly the strongest in Europe in the area of adaptive structural vibration control. Research at CIMMS is focused on characterizing the electrical and mechanical behavior of `smart` actuators as part of complex structures. Mr. Flint is working on intelligent design of such smart system technology. Research in the German institute has concentrated on building structurally integrated actuators and designing control algorithms to isolate vibration and control aeroelastic effects.. Mr. Flint's dissertation research visit will provide an active link between the U.S. and German research groups, giving CIMSS access to the large test structures and other types of stack actuators available at DLR. The control of undesirable vibration and other behavior in truss-like structures by passive design improvement is reaching its technical limit. Active control offers a way to further improve the performance range of structures. Adding a method of putting force into the structure creates force paths which can be used to control and eliminate excess vibration. A promising approach is multi-layered stack actuators, which consist of thin layers of active materials that are mechanically in serial and electrically in parallel. This area of control-structure interaction is of widespread interest in the U.S. because of its potential to significantly improve the efficiency and performance of a wide variety of structural systems, from airplanes to communication antennae, as well as suppressing vibration in heavy machinery, bridges and certain types of buildings.