Events Calendar

AME - Department Seminar

Speaker: Pier Marzocca, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering at Clarkson University

Talk Title: Design and Testing of Advanced Wind Turbine Technologies

Abstract: New advanced composite blades design methodologies can significantly impact the performance and reliability of wind turbine technologies. Current approaches employed in designing composite turbine blades, resort to sophisticated multi-physics codes taking into account fluid-structure interaction. When it comes to structural health monitoring and damage progression, the practitioner needs to evaluate the integrity of the composite structure by using in situ real-time techniques, often neglecting the effect of the degradation of structure properties, particularly when addressing complex aeroelastic simulations. The prediction of damage progression in composite wind turbine blades under dynamic aeroelastic conditions is usually a cumbersome multi-step process with significant manual user intervention. The talk with discuss a novel approach where the different components of this process, the dynamical structural analysis under varying aerodynamic and deterministic loads, and damage progression, are integrated into one reduced-order model capable of predicting the occurrence and progression of damage in real time. Severe load cases and the potential for real-time predictions of damage progression will be discussed. Several aspects of current wind turbine projects including modeling and experimental investigations will be discussed.

Biography: Pier Marzocca has been a faculty member in the Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Department at Clarkson since 2003. He received his doctoral degree in Aerospace Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech before joining Clarkson University. Professor Marzocca has been working in the field of aerospace engineering since 1996 and specializes in multi-physics modeling and characterization of advanced materials and structures, dealing with the interactions among advanced structures and fluids, magnetic, electric, and thermal fields. His research interests reside in structural dynamics and controls of advanced aerospace systems, including active flow and aeroelastic controls of flexible structures. Dr. Marzocca has received several awards including the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the SAE. He is currently an Associate Fellow of AIAA, the Chair of the SAE Unmanned Aircraft System Technical Committee, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences, and Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Aerospace Engineering and the Journal of Thermal Stresses.

Host: Professor Udwadia

More Info: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/12-5-12-marzocca.shtml

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - Room 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy

Event Link: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/12-5-12-marzocca.shtml