Day 1 :
Keynote Forum
James F Woodward
California State University, USA
Keynote: Recent developments in advanced propulsion and the issues of interstellar transport
Time : 09:45-10:15
Biography:
James F Woodward has completed a PhD in history (of science) at the University of Denver in 1972 after obtaining bachelors and master’s degrees in physics at Middlebury College and New York University in the 1960s. Retired in 2005, he is emeritus professor of history and adjunct professor of physics at California State University Fullerton where he continues to do experimental work on advanced propulsion and the enigmatic sciences (gravity manipulation). Noting that inertia in general relativity is a gravitational phenomenon where local objects are seemingly instantaneously coupled to distant matter in the universe, he has elaborated a way that transient phenomena can be used to perform said manipulation. This, and other material related to this talk, can be found in his recent book: Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Propulsion and Absurdly Benign Wormholes published by Springer Verlag in 2013. His work is supported by the exotic propulsion initiative of the Space Studies Institute.
Abstract:
Advanced propulsion is often taken to encompass all propulsion schemes more advanced than chemical rockets. Really advanced propulsion, however, is that enabling interstellar travel in short times, and that demands wormholes and/or warp bubbles. The stepping stone to such schemes is often figuring out how to accelerate a vessel without ejecting large amounts of propellant – so-called field propulsion. These schemes – wormholes, warp drives, and field propulsion – all involve gravity “manipulation”, whereas all other advanced propulsion schemes do not. In this talk I will recount some of the activities known to me of the collection of people working on gravity manipulation in the past several years. It is a tale of trial and error. But tangible results indicate that gravity manipulation may in fact be achievable, making propellant less realistic. Realistic interstellar transport demands more than propellant less propulsion, as Kip Thorne and several graduate students showed in their work on wormhole physics in 1988. Six years later, Miguel Alcubierre constructed the “warp drive” “metric” of general relativity that shows what is needed to zip around spacetime, seemingly at speeds faster than the speed of light. The requirement for both wormholes and warp drives is a Jupiter mass of negative rest mass (“exotic”) matter. Before Thorne did his work, a small collection of people worked on schemes to make lightspeed (and faster) travel possible. And after Thorne and Alcubierre, that collection of people has worked toward the goal of realizing the conditions dictated by general relativity for “hyperspeed” travel, be it through wormholes or encased in warp bubbles. We will look at whether such schemes are possible.
Keynote Forum
Ramesh K Agarwal
Washington University, USA
Keynote: The effects of rarefaction and thermal non-equilibrium on a blunt body and a bicone in hypersonic flow and their shape optimization for reducing both drag and heat transfer
Time : 10:15-10:45
Biography:
Ramesh Agarwal received PhD from Stanford University in 1975 and post-doctoral training at NASA Ames Research Center in 1976. From 1976 to 1994, he was the Program Director and McDonnell Douglas Fellow at McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories in St. Louis. From 1994 to 2001, he was the Sam Bloomfield Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. He is currently the William Palm Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author/co-author of nearly 250 archival papers and over 500 conference papers. He is on the editorial board of 20+ journals. He is a Fellow of eighteen societies including AIAA, ASME, ASEE, SAE, IEEE, APS, and AAAS among others. He is the recipient of many honors and awards.
Abstract:
Design of space vehicles pose many challenges due to their hypersonic speeds since they travel through many flow regimes due to changes in the density of the atmosphere with altitude. Some of the key characteristics associated with hypersonic flow are extremely high temperatures and heat transfer to the wall of the spacecraft. At these temperatures the assumption of thermal equilibrium is no longer valid and the effect of rotational non-equilibrium must be included in the modeling the diatomic gas flow. This paper employs the Navier-Stokes equations which are modified to include a rotational non-equilibrium relaxation model to analyze the heat transfer, drag, and shock standoff distance for hypersonic flow past an axisymmetric blunt body and a bicone for various levels of rarefaction including the rotational non-equilibrium effect. The customized flow solver, ZLOW, is used to calculate the numerical solutions for laminar viscous hypersonic flow past a blunt body and a bicone at Knudsen numbers Kn in slip flow regime with and without rotational non-equilibrium. The effects of rarefaction in slip flow regime are modeled by applying the Maxwell’s velocity slip and temperature jump boundary conditions on the surface. The effects of including the rotational non-equilibrium terms are discussed for both the continuum (Kn = 0) and slip flow regime (Kn ≤ 0.1). In addition, both the blunt body and bicone are optimized in hypersonic, rarefied flow with rotational non-equilibrium by using a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) for reduction of both drag and heat transfer.
Keynote Forum
Timothy Sands
The Naval Postgraduate School , USA
Keynote: Improved hamiltonian adaptive control of rotational mechanics
Time : 11:05-11:35
Biography:
Timothy Sands completed his PhD at the Naval Postgraduate School and Postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and Columbia University. He is Dean and Senior Military Professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s School of Strategic Force Studies. He has published research prolifically in archival journals, conference proceedings, a book chapter, in addition to keynote and invitational presentations and holds one patent in spacecraft attitude control.
Abstract:
Adaptive control techniques often adapt control commands based upon errors tracking trajectories and/or estimation errors. Direct adaptive control techniques typically directly adapt the control signal without translation of estimated parameters. Indirect adaptive control techniques indirectly adapt the control signal by translating the estimates of unknown system parameters to formulate a control signal. The adaptation rule is derived using a proof that demonstrates the elimination of tracking errors (the true objective) and demonstrates stability, which is complicated by the nonlinear closed loop system. This presentation will elaborate on such techniques applied to rotational mechanics with time-varying mass.
Keynote Forum
Fred Barez
San Jose State University, USA
Keynote: Future of mobility with autonomous and connected vehicles
Time : 11:35-12:05
Biography:
Fred Barez is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Jose State University (SJSU). His research involves smart vehicles, advanced transportation, machine learning, cyber security, smart home and energy efficiency. He is also Director of the Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Technology Laboratory where he is engaged in research related to advanced transportation including electric drive propulsion system, collision avoidance sensors and application, smart and driverless vehicles, vehicle mobile connectivity, vehicle cyber security, virtual driving, distracted driving, and autonomous vehicles through collaboration with industry. He teaches dynamic systems vibration and control, electronics packaging and design, hybrid and electric vehicle fundamentals, he has authored over 60 journal and conference publications, four book manuscripts and two book chapters. He has supervised 180 graduate student projects and theses. He is an active reviewer for several national and international publications related to energy, battery storage, energy efficiency and management, and smart sensors and devices. Prior to joining San Jose State University, he worked in Disk Drive Storage industry and was Co-Founder and Founder of two successful start-ups. He is a Member and Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a Member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Abstract:
The promise of autonomous and connected vehicles is primarily to improve the safety of the passengers and the public on the road. It is estimated that over 40,000 individuals lose their lives due to vehicle accidents. Major automotive manufacturers have invested in the range of $1 billion each to prepare for the future of mobility. Autonomous and connected vehicle technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. Even several of the ride share companies have invested their own finances or have developed joint partnership with automotive manufacturer to get a head start. The main components of such vehicles are the vehicle its, the huge number of electric and electronic devises and sensors, and the application of artificial intelligence through various forms of embedded software. The technologies are being developed across the board to improve the electrical power systems, the automotive communication CANBUS and the sophisticated telematics required for the self-driving cars. The advances and changes in the future of mobility environment are being made possible, in particular, related to sensors such as LiDAR, camera, radar, and sonar to name a few, to the vast required high speed processors, memories and software. Human Machine Interaction (HMI) must be maintained at various levels of autonomy. In this presentation, a brief overview of the autonomous and connected vehicles and its various levels of related autonomy will be presented. Various types of sensors are currently being developed to improve the self-driving autonomy of transportation environment. Challenges and ever-increasing opportunities related to future of mobility and inclusion of such technologies as autonomous and connected will be presented.
Keynote Forum
Brendan J O Toole
University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA
Keynote: Experimental evaluation and computational simulation of structures subject to high velocity impact loading
Time : 12:05–12:35
Biography:
Brendan O’Toole is Director of the Center for Materials and Structures, Professor, and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware. His research interests include experimental characterization of metallic and composite material properties under a variety of loading conditions and dynamic computational analysis of structures subject to impact and explosive loading.
Abstract:
A series of experimental studies were conducted to study the plastic deformation of metallic plates under hypervelocity impact using a two-stage light gas gun. In these experiments, cylindrical Lexan projectiles were fired at target plates with velocities in the range of 4.0-6.0 km/s. Target materials studied include steel alloys, forged titanium, and additive manufactured titanium. Experiments were designed to produce a front side impact crater and a permanent bulging deformation on the back surface of the target without inducing complete perforation of the plates. Free surface velocities from the back surface of target plates were measured using the newly developed multiplexed photonic doppler velocimetry (MPDV) system. Trends in deformation patterns and failure modes for different target plate materials will be presented. Under these impact conditions, very high pressure and temperature states cause the target materials to behave like a fluid. Equation of state and complex material models are needed in the simulation models. Two different modeling approaches have been used to simulate the experiments. A Lagrangian based smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method was used within LS-Dyna. SPH is a meshless numerical technique where the bodies are represented by particles or interpolation points. Two dimensional axisymmetric simulations were also conducted using CTH, an Eulerian hydrodynamics code. Both techniques were able to simulate the large deformations that developed over 2-5 microseconds. Rear surface velocity profiles versus time were calculated at several points near the impact center. Model features and comparisons with experimental data will be presented.
Keynote Forum
Isaac Elishakoff
Florida Atlantic University, USA
Keynote: Uncertainty analysis in engineering: Past, present, and future
Time : 12:35–13:05
Biography:
Isaac Elishakoff has completed his PhD from Moscow Power Engineering State University. He is a distinguished Research Professor at the Florida Atlantic University, Author or Editor of 30 books. He has published more than 450 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an Associate Editor of four journals and Member of Boards of 18 journals.
Abstract:
Uncertainty quantification is becoming a very extensive field of research in recent years. Great scientists or government officials in unison pinpoint of its importance. According to Albert Einstein as far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. According to the former queen of the Netherlands Beatrix, if one thing today is certain, it is a feeling of uncertainty—a premonition that the future cannot be a simple extension of the present. Galileo advises us: Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured. We measure uncertainty via roughly speaking via three alternative approaches: theory of probability and random processes; fuzzy sets based approached and bounding approaches, based on worst possible response, in combination with making worst possible response as high as possible. The first two theories are associated with a given measure, like probability density or membership function. The latter approach is known in the literature by various names such as guaranteed approach, convex modeling of uncertainty or information-gap theory, interval analysis and so on. The worst case scenario is easiest to explain to the boss or to the laymen. Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE-18 CE) advises us that: I see and approve better things, but follow the worse. William Shakespeare propagates analogous idea that: Since the affairs of men rest still uncertain, let’s reason with the worst that may befall. Naturally worst case scenario may turn to be very conservative. Hence there is a necessity of minimizing the worst case response. The current lecture will deliver into two sub-parts of the uncertainty modeling. Specifically the first part discusses various approaches of stochastic linearization and demonstrates the advantages of the recently proposed non-classical methodologies. It turns out that energy based linearization technique produces superb results. Second part deals with data enclosing problem and bounding the uncertain data with proper rectangles, ellipsoids, or super-ellipsoids suggested independently by Gabriel lame and Piet Hein. We suggest utilizing such enclosing of the data that the maximum predicted response is minimal. The super-ellipsoidal modeling is showed as the superior to all other techniques. The example of composite plate with four-dimensional data enclosed in super-ellipsoid is considered in detail. General recommendations are made for uncertainty quantification in conjunction with available data.