AME Seminar Series welcomes Dr. Surya R. Kalidindi for the first seminar of the new year. Kalidindi is a Professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering as well as the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Kalidindi will begin his seminar presentation at 10:30am in the Hitachi Conference Room located in 214 Felgar Hall. His presentation is titled, “Data Science Approaches for Mining Structure-Property-Processing Linkages from Large Datasets.”

Abstract: Materials with enhanced performance characteristics have served as critical enablers for the successful development of advanced technologies throughout human history and have contributed immensely to the prosperity and well-being of various nations. Although the core connections between the material’s internal structure, its evolution through various manufacturing processes and its macroscale properties in service are widely acknowledged to exist, establishing this fundamental knowledge base has proven effort-intensive, slow and very expensive for a number of candidate material systems being explored for advanced technology applications. It is anticipated that the multi-functional performance characteristics of a material are likely to be controlled by a relatively small number of salient features in its microstructure. However, cost-effective validated protocols do not yet exist for fast identification of these salient features and establishment of the desired core knowledge needed for the accelerated design, manufacture and deployment of new materials in advanced technologies. The main impediment arises from lack of a broadly accepted framework for a rigorous quantification of the material’s internal structure and objective identification of the salient features in the microstructure that control the properties of interest. Materials Informatics focuses on the development of data science algorithms and computationally efficient protocols capable of mining the essential linkages in large multiscale materials datasets (both experimental and modeling) and building robust knowledge systems that can be readily accessed, searched and shared by the broader community. Given the nature of the challenges faced in the design and manufacture of new advanced materials, this new emerging interdisciplinary field is ideally positioned to produce a major transformation in the current practices. The novel data science tools produced by this emerging field promise to significantly accelerate the design and development of new advanced materials through their increased efficacy in gleaning and blending the disparate knowledge and insights hidden in “big data” gathered from multiple sources. Our ongoing research has outlined a specific strategy for data science enabled development of new/improved materials and key components of the proposed overall framework are illustrated with examples.

Bio: Surya R. Kalidindi earned a B.Tech. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After his graduation from MIT in 1992, Surya joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor, where he served as the Department Head during 2000-2008. Under his leadership, the department experienced tremendous growth and was ranked 10th nationally among Materials Science and Engineering programs by Academic Analysts in 2006. In 2013, Surya accepted a new position as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the George W. Woodruff School at Georgia Institute of Technology, with joint appointments in the School of Computational Science and Engineering and in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Surya’s research efforts over the past two decades have made seminal contributions to the fields of crystal plasticity, microstructure design, spherical nanoindentation and materials informatics. His work has produced about 200 journal articles, four book chapters and a new book on Microstructure Sensitive Design. His work is well cited by peer researchers as reflected by an h-index of 48 and current citation rate of about 1000 citations/year. He has recently been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt award in recognition of his lifetime achievements in research.

This seminar presentation is sponsored by ExxonMobil. Refreshments provided.

For more information, please click here.

For accommodations on the basis of disability, please contact Danielle Geier (405) 325-1715 or dgeier@ou.edu.

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014, Dr. Tahira Reid visited AME for a seminar presentation. Her seminar presentation was titled, “The Influence of Social and Cultural Considerations on Engineering and Design.”

Abstract: In this talk, Dr. Reid will discuss two projects to illustrate how social and cultural considerations influence design methods. In the Beauty of Mechanical Engineering project, Dr. Reid and her students are conducting experiments to understand how heat moves through curly hair and the mechanisms that cause permanent structural changes in the hair (i.e., heat damage). Currently, trained professionals in the hair industry cannot predict when heat damage will occur and often rely on heuristics and intuition in their hair care approaches. In addition, scientists that have conducted studies with heat and hair have often used Caucasian hair which cannot be generalized to all ethnic groups; they have also conducted experiments that are not ecologically consistent with individuals’ use context. As a result, a number of lay scientists have emerged whose use of contexts are ecologically valid, but are lacking the experimental and quantitative rigor that engineers can provide. With hair care being a multi-billion dollar industry and having meaning for a vast majority of the population, research of this kind is important. In the Socially Conscious Design project, Dr. Reid and her students are exploring ways that compassion can help with problem framing and enhancing design solutions. There are some product interactions, namely in medical environments, in which the design of a product/system elicits fear and anxiety within individuals. The ultimate goal of this research is to use interdisciplinary methods to examine ways in which these emotional needs can be considered during the design process.

Bio: Dr. Tahira N. Reid is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University and is the director of the Research in Engineering and Interdisciplinary Design (REID) Laboratory. Her research interests include developing methods that help engineers think critically about non-technical issues and their impact on engineered design solutions. Prior to arriving at Purdue in 2011, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Mechanical Engineering department at Iowa State working in the Interdisciplinary Research in Sustainable (IRIS) Design Laboratory under the mentorship of Erin MacDonald. In 2010, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Design Science, with Mechanical Engineering and Psychology as her focus areas. Dr. Reid received both her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2000 and 2004, respectively. She received national attention for patenting a childhood invention: a Double Dutch jump rope device. In 2000, she exhibited her device at the Smithsonian during the Playful Mind’s exhibit and demonstrated it on NBC’s Today Show. Her story has been featured in numerous news media sources and is featured in two children’s books.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2014, Dr. Jandro Abot visited AME for a seminar presentation. His seminar presentation was titled, “Self-Sensing Composite Materials Using Carbon Nanotube Yarns: A New Paradigm in Structural Health Monitoring.”

Abstract: Composite materials are widely used in aerospace structures and many applications because of their superior specific stiffness and strength respect to weight. However, monitoring their structural health still remains too complex and difficult to implement in an integrated and distributed manner. This presentation is about integrated structural health monitoring in polymeric and composite materials using carbon nanotube yarns. Carbon nanotubes are grown into arrays that can be drawn into webs and further twisted into yarns that contain thousands of carbon nanotubes in their cross-sections. These carbon nanotube yarns are lightweight, stiff, strong, ductile and electrically conductive fiber-like materials that we are studying as piezoimpedance-based sensors. The proven concept of real-time, integrated, and widely distributed damage detection and strain measurement using carbon nanotube yarn sensors is presented including the latest experimental results. The coupled mechanical, electrical and thermal response of the carbon nanotube yarns is of significant importance for their use as sensors and recently obtained results are presented including a not-before observed negative piezoresistance response. The effect of composition and structure of the carbon nanotube yarns on that coupled response is also discussed. The present challenges and proposed approaches for robust real-time structural health monitoring that eventually leads to condition-based maintenance are outlined for aerospace structures and other components, devices, and structures.

Dr. Jandro Abot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Intelligent Materials Laboratory, and Director of International Engineering Program Development of the School of Engineering at The Catholic University of America. He was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University where he had received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Dr. Abot also holds a 6-year degree in Structural Engineering from the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay. Dr. Abot’s expertise is on the science and technology of composite materials and structural health monitoring of structures using carbon nanotube-based sensors. Dr. Abot authored or co-authored one hundred journal and proceeding papers and led research projects sponsored by AFOSR, NASA, and Fulbright and collaborated on projects sponsored by NSF, ONR, and industrial consortiums. Dr. Abot taught nineteen different engineering courses in Solid Mechanics, Materials Engineering, Experimental Mechanics and Introduction to Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, always receiving very good students’ evaluations. Dr. Abot is always committed to advising many graduate students and mentoring undergraduate students in the framework of research projects, and actively engaged in many departmental and school service activities such as recruitment, accreditation and international programs.