Alper Erturk — Next-generation Smart/Meta-material Concepts for Dynamic Problems in Clean Energy, Defense, and Healthcare
The Center for Urban Science + Progress, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Department of Civil, Urban and Environmental Engineering at NYU Tandon welcome you to attend the research seminar "Next-generation smart/meta-material concepts for dynamic problems in clean energy, defense, and healthcare" by Dr. Alper Erturk, the Carl Ring Family Endowed Chair and Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology's G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. This event will be held in 5 MetroTech, Room 400, at NYU Tandon's downtown Brooklyn Campus.
About the Lecture
Conventional smart materials such as piezoceramics and shape memory alloys couple multiple physical domains and enable stimuli-responsive behavior, while metamaterials leverage engineered lattice structures to exhibit properties beyond those of ordinary materials. This talk presents an overview of our efforts on exploiting smart/meta-material concepts, as well as their synergistic integration, for applications spanning from energy harvesting and elastic/acoustic wave manipulation to ultrasonic communication and neuromorphic computing. First, we will discuss energy harvesting for low-power electricity generation from vibrations by leveraging designed nonlinearities for bandwidth enhancement. Multiphysics problems of energy harvesting from fluid-structure interaction, and multifunctional concepts such as an energy-harvesting bioinspired robotic fish will also be presented, along with deep-sea investigations to sustain high hydrostatic pressures. We will then discuss mechanical and electromechanical metamaterials and metastructures for vibration attenuation and wave manipulation, followed by piezoelectric metamaterials with digital programming enabled by synthetic impedance circuits. Through the capability of circuit impedance modulation in space and/or time, we will show resonant concepts from tunable rainbow effect and reciprocity breaking to exceptional points and topological interface modes. Nonlinear metastructures exploiting chaotic vibrations and envelope soliton generation from a nonlinear piezoelectric metamaterial for reservoir computing will be presented. Finally, we will discuss examples of higher frequency problems including gradient-index phononic crystal lens designs for elastic and acoustic waves, wireless ultrasonic power and data transfer, and leveraging vibrations and guided waves in the human skull-brain system for transcranial ultrasound, along with metamaterial opportunities therein.
About the Speaker
Alper Erturk is the Carl Ring Family Endowed Chair and Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. His theoretical and experimental research program aims to understand, manipulate, and leverage vibration and wave phenomena in passive and active materials and structures across disciplines, geometric scales, and applications. His publication/presentation record includes more than 150 journal papers, 250 conference papers/abstracts, 5 book chapters, and 2 books (total citations > 27,000 and h-index: 76). He is a recipient of many awards including an NSF CAREER Award (in dynamical systems), ASME C.D. Mote Jr. Early Career Award (for research excellence in vibration and acoustics), ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award (for research excellence in adaptive structures and material systems), SEM James Dally Young Investigator Award (for research excellence in experimental mechanics), and numerous journal/conference best paper awards including the Philip E. Doak Award of the Journal of Sound & Vibration, and, most recently, the ASME Best Paper Award in Structural Dynamics & Control. Prof. Erturk has served as an Associate Editor for various journals and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Materials & Structures (IOP). He held Invited/Adjunct Professor positions at Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) in Mechanical Engineering and at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) in Aerospace Engineering. He is a Fellow of ASME and SPIE, and an Associate Fellow of AIAA. His other affiliations at Georgia Tech include the Institute for Matter and Systems; Strategic Energy Institute; Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines; Center for Nonlinear Science; Center for Biologically Inspired Design; Bioengineering Graduate Program; and he is also the Chair of the Acoustics and Dynamics Research Area Group in Mechanical Engineering.
Visitor Information
This event will be held in 5 MetroTech, Room 400, at NYU Tandon's downtown Brooklyn Campus. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Luma is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.