You're invited to attend

"From Probability Space to Aerospace:
Reliability of Advanced Composites and Structures"

by

Wen Luo
Postdoctoral Research Associate | California Institute of Technology

Thursday, February 23
3 - 4 pm
Student Success Center Press Room A

About the Seminar: 
Most engineering structures, including airframes, space structures, micro-electronic components, shall be designed for failure probability not exceeding one in a million, especially for composite structures widely used in aerospace, automotive, and wind energy industries. To design ultra-reliable composites, a good strategy is to learn from nature. The first part of this talk will be devoted to the lessons learned from the probabilistic reliability analysis of the bio-inspired composite – nacre, also called the mother-of-pearl. It demonstrates that superior material reliability can be achieved by having a clever design of the material microstructure, which opens up new dimensions in “material by design”. Shifting from the material level to the structure level, the second part of the talk will be focused on the deterministic reliability study, particularly the coiling-induced buckling, of an ultra-thin deployable space structure made from carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) for the Space Solar Power Project. This propagating buckle always causes local stress concentrations and could potentially lead to material damage and delamination, affecting the reliability of deployment after the spacecraft is launched into space. Therefore, a theory has been developed to explain the root cause of buckle formation as well as preventative measures to curb the buckle growth. This talk will conclude with a few remarks on how these two studies have laid the foundation for future research to further design and manufacture super reliable composites for a new space era that is affordable to all.

About the Speaker: 
Wen Luo is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Aerospace at California Institute of Technology working on the design, manufacturing, and testing of composite deployable space structures. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, where he worked on stochastic fracture mechanics of biomimetic materials. He received his bachelor's degree from Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi’an, China in Flight Vehicle Manufacturing Engineering. His current research interests focus on advanced manufacturing of composites, probabilistic mechanics and rare-event reliability, structure instabilities, and deployable aerospace structures.