Aircraft designers are constantly searching for technologies, tools, and methods to expand the flight envelope and mission effectiveness of modern air vehicles. Smart materials and morphing technologies accomplish this by providing the vehicle a way to adapt to changing environments and demands resulting in a more capable, versatile aircraft. Often, however, these technologies fail to transition to fielded systems due to decreased performance when integrated into real systems. Multidisciplinary analysis and optimization can assist in raising the technology readiness level of many of these technologies by analyzing their impact at a system level. Multidisciplinary experimental characterization is then required to validate these multidisciplinary analysis methods. Clever informed design from validated methods at the conceptual level can often mitigate negative system level interaction of a technology post integration. Research topics of interest include (1) morphing/reconfigurable structures technologies; (2) novel methods of system level morphing technology optimization methods; (3) system level morphing structures analysis methods; (4) experimental morphing structures characterization; (5) multidisciplinary experimental testing; (6) smart material applications research; (7) smart material modeling techniques; and (8) multiscale material modeling and applications.

key words

Smart Materials; Morphing Aircraft; Multiscale Modeling; Experimental Characterization; Reconfigurable Structures

Citizenship:  Open to U.S. citizens

Level:  Open to Postdoctoral and Senior applicants