July 23rd will be a two-for in our Summer Seminar Series (second invite coming shortly), with two great talks for the price of one trip to the REEF. These talks are open to all, and are a great opportunity to spur discussion and collaboration. Be sure to make time to attend!
Speaker: Austin Downey, Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina
Topic: Progress Towards Real-Time Decision-Making for Structures Experiencing High-Rate Dynamics
Location: UF-REEF Auditorium; 1350 N. Poquito RD, Shalimar, FL
Time: Thursday, 23 July, 2:00 PM
RW Sponsor: Dr. Jacob Dodson, RWMFS
Abstract: A structural system operating in a high-rate dynamic environment can experience sudden and unmodeled plastic deformation of the structure that may further lead to damaged electronics, sensors, and/or delicate payloads. Examples of structures that may experience high-rate dynamics include hypersonic vehicles, space craft, and active blast mitigation barriers. To enhance the survivability of these structural systems, real-time decision-making modules capable of taking corrective actions need to be developed. A current challenge exists in the development of structural modeling techniques that can provide accurate representations of the system at a time interval of less than 1 ms. This presentation will discuss recent research efforts undertaken at the AFRL focused on developing a parallelized residual minimization model updating technique where model parameters are drawn from a continuously updated parameter pool. Results demonstrate that a continuously changing boundary condition can be successfully tracked at time intervals of 10ms or less. Computational speed and estimation accuracy as a function of model size as well as the role of measurement noise are examined in this work.
Bio: Austin Downey is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with a dual appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on increasing the resiliency of mesoscale structures to both manmade and natural events through the real-time monitoring, modeling, and adaptive control of structures. He has authored over 20 journal papers related to his research and is the lead inventor on two U.S. patent. He obtained his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 2018 in Engineering Mechanics and Wind Energy Science, Engineering, and Policy (Dual Majors) where he was an NSF-IGERT fellow.